Some West Saxons stayed to watch Guthrum, but very few, for armies are expensive to maintain and, once gathered, they always seem to fall sick, so Alfred took advantage of the truce to send the men of the fyrds back to their farms while he and his household troops went to Scireburnan, which lay a half day's march north of Werham and, happily for Alfred, was home to a bishop and a monastery. Beocca told me that Alfred spent that winter reading the ancient law codes from Kent, Mercia, and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Wessex, and doubtless he was readying himself to compile his own laws, which he eventually did. I am certain he was happy that winter, criticizing his ancestors' rules and dreaming of the perfect society where the church told us what not to do and the king punished us for doing it.

Huppa, Ealdorman of Thornsæta, commanded the few men who were left facing Werham's ramparts, while Odda the Younger led a troop of horsemen who patrolled the shores of the Poole, but the two bands made only a small force and they could do little except keep an eye on the Danes, and why should they do more? There was a truce, Guthrum had sworn on the holy ring, and Wessex was at peace.

The Yule feast was a thin affair in Werham, though the Danes did their best and at least Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom there was plenty of ale so men got drunk, but my chief memory of that Yule is of Guthrum crying. The tears poured down his face as a harpist played a sad tune and a skald recited a poem about Guthrum's mother. Her beauty, the skald said, was rivaled only by the stars, while her kindness was such that flowers sprang up in winter to pay her homage. "She was a rancid bitch,"

Ragnar whispered to me, "and ugly as a bucket of shit."

"You knew her?"

"Ravn knew her. He always said she had a voice that could cut down a tree."

Guthrum was living up to his name "the Unlucky." He had come so close to destroying Wessex and it had only been Halfdan's death that had cheated him of the prize, and that was not Guthrum's fault, yet Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom there was a simmering resentment among the trapped army. Men muttered that nothing could ever prosper under Guthrum's leadership, and perhaps that distrust had made him gloomier than ever, or perhaps it was hunger.

For the Danes were hungry. Alfred kept his word and sent food, but there was never quite enough, and I did not understand why the Danes did not eat their horses that were left to graze on the winter marshes between the fortress and the Poole. Those horses grew desperately thin, their pathetic grazing supplemented by what little hay the Danes had discovered in the town, and when that was gone they pulled the thatch from some of Werham's houses, and that poor diet kept the horses alive until the first glimmerings of spring. I welcomed those new signs of the turning year: the song of a missel thrush, the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom dog violets showing in sheltered spots, the lambs' tails on the hazel trees, and the first frogs croaking in the marsh. Spring was coming, and when the land was green Guthrum would leave and we hostages would be freed.

We received little news other than what the Danes told us, but sometimes a message was delivered to one or other of the hostages, usually nailed to a willow tree outside the gate, and one such message was addressed to me. For the first time, I was grateful that Beocca had taught me to read for Father Willibald had written and told me I had a son. Mildrith had given birth before Yule and the boy was healthy and she was also healthy and the boy was called Uhtred.

I wept when I read that. I had not expected to feel so much, but I did, and Ragnar asked why I was crying and I told him and he Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom produced a barrel of ale and we gave ourselves a feast, or as much of a feast as we could make, and he gave me a tiny silver arm ring as a gift for the boy. I had a son.

Uhtred.

The next day I helped Ragnar relaunchWind-Viper, which had been dragged ashore so her timbers could be caulked, and we stowed her bilges with the stones that served as ballast and rigged her mast and afterward killed a hare that we had trapped in the fields where the horses tried to graze, and Ragnar poured the hare's blood on theWind-Viper 's stem and called on Thor to send her fair winds and for Odin to send her great victories. We ate the hare that night and drank the last of the ale, and the next morning a dragon boat arrived, coming from the sea, and I was amazed that Alfred had not ordered our fleet to patrol the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom waters off the Poole's mouth, but none of our boats was there, and so that single Danish ship came upriver and brought a message for Guthrum.

Ragnar was vague about the ship. It came from East Anglia, he said, which turned out to be untrue, and merely brought news of that kingdom, which was equally untrue. It had come from the west, around Cornwalum, from the lands of the Welsh, but I only learned that later and, at the time, I did not care, because Ragnar also told me that we should be leaving soon, very soon, and I only had thoughts for the son I had not seen. Uhtred Uhtredson.

That night Guthrum gave the hostages a feast, a good feast, too, with food and ale that had been brought on the newly arrived dragon ship, and Guthrum praised us for Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom being good guests and he gave each of us an arm ring, and promised we would all be free soon. "When?" I asked.

"Soon!" His long face glistened in the firelight as he raised a horn of ale to me.

"Soon! Now drink!"

We all drank, and after the feast we hostages went to the nunnery's hall where Guthrum insisted we slept. In the daytime we were free to roam wherever we wanted inside the Danish lines, and free to carry weapons if we chose, but at night he wanted all the hostages in one place so that his black-cloaked guards could keep an eye on us, and it was those guards who came for us in the night's dark heart. They carried flaming torches and they kicked us awake, ordering us outside, and one of them kicked Serpent-Breath away when I reached for her.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "Get outside," he snarled, and when I reached for the sword again a spear stave cracked across my skull and two more spears jabbed my arse, and I had no choice but to stumble out the door into a gusting wind that was bringing a cold, spitting rain, and the wind tore at the flaming torches that lit the street where at least a hundred Danes waited, all armed, and I could see they had saddled and bridled their thin horses and my first thought was that these were the men who would escort us back to the West Saxon lines.

Then Guthrum, cloaked in black, pushed through the helmeted men. No words were spoken. Guthrum, grim faced, the white bone in his hair, just nodded, and his blackcloaked men drew their swords and poor Wælla, Alfred's cousin, was the first hostage to die. Guthrum winced slightly at the priest's Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom death, for I think he had liked Wælla, but by then I was turning, ready to fight the men behind me even though I had no weapon and knew that fight could only end with my death. A sword was already coming for me, held by a Dane in a leather jerkin that was studded with metal rivets, and he was grinning as he ran the blade toward my unprotected belly and he was still grinning as the throwing ax buried its blade between his eyes. I remember the thump of that blade striking home, the spurt of blood in the flamelight, the noise as the man fell onto the flint and shingle street, and all the while the frantic protests from the other hostages as they were murdered, but I lived. Ragnar had hurled the ax and now stood beside me, sword drawn. He was in his war gear, in polished chain mail, in high boots and a helmet that he had decorated with a pair of Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom eagle wings, and in the raw light of the wind-fretted fires he looked like a god come down to Midgard.

"They must all die," Guthrum insisted. The other hostages were dead or dying, their hands bloodied from their hopeless attempts to ward off the blades, and a dozen war Danes, swords red, now edged toward me to finish the job.

"Kill this one," Ragnar shouted, "and you must kill me first." His men came out of the crowd to stand beside their lord. They were outnumbered by at least five to one, but they were Danes and they showed no fear.

Guthrum stared at Ragnar. Hacca was still not dead and he twitched in his agony and Guthrum, irritated that the man lived, drew his sword and rammed it into Hacca's throat. Guthrum's men were stripping the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom arm rings from the dead, rings that had been gifts from their master just hours before.

"They all must die," Guthrum said when Hacca was still. "Alfred will kill our hostages now, so it must be man for man."

"Uhtred is my brother," Ragnar said, "and you are welcome to kill him, lord, but you must first kill me."

Guthrum stepped back. "This is no time for Dane to fight Dane," he said grudgingly, and sheathed his sword to show that I could live. I stepped across the street to find the man who had stolen Serpent-Breath, WaspSting, and my armor, and he gave them to me without protest.

Guthrum's men were mounting their horses.

"What's happening?" I asked Ragnar.

"What do you think?" he asked truculently.

"I think you're breaking the truce."

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "We did not come this far," he said, "to march away like beaten dogs." He watched as I buckled Serpent-Breath's belt. "Come with us," he said.

"Come with you where?"

"To take Wessex, of course."

I do not deny that there was a tug on my heart strings, a temptation to join the wild Danes in their romp across Wessex, but the tug was easily resisted. "I have a wife," I told him, "and a child."

He grimaced. "Alfred has trapped you,

Uhtred."

"No," I said, "the spinners did that." Ur r, Ver andi, and Skuld, the three women who spin our threads at the foot of Yggdrasil, had decided my fate. Destiny is all. "I shall go to my woman," I said.

"But not yet," Ragnar said with a half smile, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom and he took me to the river where a small boat carried us to where the newly launchedWind-Viper was anchored. A half crew was already aboard, as was Brida, who gave me a breakfast of bread and ale. At first light, when there was just enough gray in the sky to reveal the glistening mud of the river's banks, Ragnar ordered the anchor raised and we drifted downstream on current and tide, gliding past the dark shapes of other Danish ships until we came to a reach wide enough to turnWind-Viper and there the oars were fitted, men tugged, and she swiveled gracefully, both oar banks began to pull, and she shot out into the Poole where most of the Danish fleet rode at anchor. We did not go far, just to the barren shore of a big island that sits in the center of the Poole, a place of squirrels, seabirds, and foxes.

Ragnar let the ship glide toward the shore Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom and, when her prow touched the beach, he embraced me. "You are free," he said.

"Thank you," I said fervently, remembering those bloodied corpses by Werham's nunnery.

He held on to my shoulders. "You and I," he said, "are tied as brothers. Don't forget that. Now go."

I splashed through the shallows as theWindViper, a ghostly gray in the dawn, backed away. Brida called a farewell, I heard the oars bite, and the ship was gone.

That island was a forbidding place.

Fishermen and fowlers had lived there once, and an anchorite, a monk who lives by himself, had occupied a hollow tree in the island's center, but the coming of the Danes had driven them all away and the remnants of the fishermen's houses were nothing but Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom charred timbers on blackened ground. I had the island to myself, and it was from its shore that I watched the vast Danish fleet row toward the Poole's entrance, though they stopped there rather than go to sea because the wind, already brisk, had freshened even more and now it was a half gale blowing from the south and the breakers were shattering wild and white above the spit of sand that protected their new anchorage.

The Danish fleet had moved there, I surmised, because to stay in the river would have exposed their crews to the West Saxon bowmen who would be among the troops reoccupying Werham.

Guthrum had led his horsemen out of Werham, that much was obvious, and all the Danes who had remained in the town were now crammed onto the ships where they waited for the weather to calm so they could Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom sail away, but to where, I had no idea.

All day that south wind blew, getting harder and bringing a slashing rain, and I became bored of watching the Danish fleet fret at its anchors and so I explored the island's shore and found the remnants of a small boat half hidden in a thicket and I hauled the wreck down to the water and discovered it floated well enough, and the wind would take me away from the Danes and so I waited for the tide to turn and then, half swamped in the broken craft, I floated free. I used a piece of wood as a crude paddle, but the wind was howling now and it drove me wet and cold across that wide water until, as night fell, I came to the Poole's northern shore and there I became one of the sceadugengan again, picking my way through reeds and marshes until I found higher ground where bushes gave me shelter for a broken sleep.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom In the morning I walked eastward, still buffeted by wind and rain, and so came to Hamtun that evening. Where I found that Mildrith and my son were gone.

Taken by Odda the Younger.

Father Willibald told me the tale. Odda had come that morning, while Leofric was down at the shore securing the boats against the bruising wind, and Odda had said that the Danes had broken out, that they would have killed their hostages, that they might come to Hamtun at any moment, and that Mildrith should flee. "She did not want to go, lord," Willibald said, and I could hear the timidity in his voice. My anger was frightening him. "They had horses, lord," he said, as if that explained it.

"You didn't send for Leofric?"

"They wouldn't let me, lord." He paused.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "But we were scared, lord. The Danes had broken the truce and we thought you were dead."

Leofric had set off in pursuit, but by the time he learned Mildrith was gone Odda had at least a half morning's start and Leofric did not even know where he would have gone.

"West," I said, "back to Defnascir."

"And the Danes?" Leofric asked. "Where are they going?"

"Back to Mercia?" I guessed.

Leofric shrugged. "Across Wessex? With Alfred waiting? And you say they went on horseback? How fit were the horses?"

"They weren't fit. They were half starved."

"Then they haven't gone to Mercia," he said firmly.

"Perhaps they've gone to meet Ubba,"

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Willibald suggested.

"Ubba!" I had not heard that name in a long time.

"There were stories, lord," Willibald said nervously, "that he was among the Britons in Wales. That he had a fleet on the Sæfern."

That made sense. Ubba was replacing his dead brother, Halfdan, and evidently leading another force of Danes against Wessex, but where? If he crossed the Sæfern's wide sea then he would be in Defnascir, or perhaps he was marching around the river, heading into Alfred's heartland from the north, but for the moment I did not care. I only wanted to find my wife and child. There was pride in that desire, of course, but more than pride. Mildrith and I were suited to each other, I had missed her, I wanted to see my child. That ceremony in Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom the rain-dripping cathedral had worked its magic and I wanted her back and I wanted to punish Odda the Younger for taking her away. "Defnascir," I said again, "that's where the bastard's gone. And that's where we go tomorrow." Odda, I was certain, would head for the safety of home. Not that he feared my revenge, for he surely assumed I was dead, but he would be worried about the Danes, and I was worried that they might have found him on his westward flight.

"You and me?" Leofric asked.

I shook my head. "We takeHeahengel and a full fighting crew."

Leofric looked skeptical. "In this weather?"

"The wind's dropping," I said, and it was, though it still tugged at the thatch and rattled the shutters, but it was calmer the next morning, but not by much for Hamtun's Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom water was still flecked white as the small waves ran angrily ashore, suggesting that the seas beyond the Solente would be huge and furious. But there were breaks in the clouds, the wind had gone into the east, and I was in no mood to wait. Two of the crew, both seamen all their lives, tried to dissuade me from the voyage. They had seen this weather before, they said, and the storm would come back, but I refused to believe them and they, to their credit, came willingly, as did Father Willibald, which was brave of him for he hated the sea and was facing rougher water than any he had seen before.

We rowed up Hamtun's water, hoisted the sail in the Solente, brought the oars inboard, and ran before that east wind as though the serpent Corpse-Ripper was at our stern.Heahengel hammered through the short seas, threw the white water high, and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom raced, and that was while we were still in sheltered waters. Then we passed the white stacks at Wiht's end, the rocks that are called the Nædles, and the first tumultuous seas hit us and theHeahengel bent to them.

Yet still we flew, and the wind was dropping and the sun shone through rents in the dark clouds to glitter on the churning sea, and Leofric suddenly roared a warning and pointed ahead.

He was pointing to the Danish fleet. Like me they believed the weather was improving, and they must have been in a hurry to join Guthrum, for the whole fleet was coming out of the Poole and was now sailing south to round the rocky headland, which meant, like us, they were going west. Which could mean they were going to Defnascir or perhaps planning to sail clear about Cornwalum to join Ubba in Wales.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "You want to tangle with them?" Leofric asked me grimly.

I heaved on the steering oar, driving us south. "We'll go outside them," I said, meaning we would head out to sea and I doubted any of their ships would bother with us. They were in a hurry to get wherever they were going and with luck, I thought,Heahengel would outrun them for she was a fast ship and they were still well short of the headland.

We flew downwind and there was joy in it, the joy of steering a boat through angry seas, though I doubt there was much joy for the men who had to bailHeahengel, chucking the water over the side, and it was one of those men who looked astern and called a sudden warning to me. I turned to see a black squall seething across the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom broken seas. It was an angry patch of darkness and rain, coming fast, so fast that Willibald, who had been clutching the ship's side as he vomited overboard, fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross, and began to pray. "Get the sail down!" I shouted at Leofric, and he staggered forward, but too late, much too late, for the squall struck.

One moment the sun had shone, then we were abruptly thrust into the devil's playground as the squall hit us like a shield wall. The ship shuddered, water and wind and gloom smashing us in sudden turmoil, and Heahengel swung to the blow, going broadside to the sea and nothing I could do would hold her straight, and I saw Leofric stagger across the deck as the steorbord side went under water. "Bail!" I shouted desperately. "Bail!" And then, with a noise Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom like thunder, the great sail split into tatters that whipped off the yard, and the ship came slowly upright, but she was low in the water, and I was using all my strength to keep her coming around, creeping around, reversing our course so that I could put her bows into that turmoil of sea and wind, and the men were praying, making the sign of the cross, bailing water, and the remnants of the sail and the broken lines were mad things, ragged demons, and the sudden gale was howling like the furies in the rigging and I thought how futile it would be to die at sea so soon after Ragnar had saved my life.

Somehow we got six oars into the water and then, with two men to an oar, we pulled into that seething chaos. Twelve men pulled six oars, three men tried to cut the rigging's wreckage away, and the others threw water over the side. No orders were given, for no Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom voice could be heard above that shrieking wind that was flensing the skin from the sea and whipping it in white spindrift. Huge swells rolled, but they were no danger for theHeahengel rode them, but their broken tops threatened to swamp us, and then I saw the mast sway, its shrouds parting, and I shouted uselessly, for no one could hear me, and the great spruce spar broke and fell. It fell across the ship's side and the water flowed in again, but Leofric and a dozen men somehow managed to heave the mast overboard and it banged down our flank, then jerked because it was still held to the ship by a tangle of seal-hide ropes. I saw Leofric pluck an ax from the swamped bilge and start to slash at that tangle of lines, but I screamed at him with all my breath to put the ax down.

Because the mast, tied to us and floating Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom behind us, seemed to steady the ship. It heldHeahengel into the waves and wind, and let the great seas go rolling beneath us, and we could catch our breath at last. Men looked at each other as if amazed to find themselves alive, and I could even let go of the steering oar because the mast, with the big yard and the remnants of its sail still attached, was holding us steady. I found my body aching. I was soaked through, must have been cold, but did not notice.

Leofric came to stand beside me.Heahengel 's prow was facing eastward, but we were traveling westward, driven backward by the tide and wind, and I turned to make certain we had sea room, and then touched Leofric's shoulder and pointed toward the shore.

Where we saw a fleet dying.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom The Danes had been sailing south, following the shore from the Poole's entrance to the rearing headland, and that meant they were on a lee shore, and in that sudden resurgence of the storm they stood no chance. Ship after ship was being driven ashore. A few had made it past the headland, and another handful were trying to row clear of the cliffs, but most were doomed. We could not see their deaths, but I could imagine them. The crash of hulls against rocks, the churning water breaking through the planks, the pounding of sea and wind and timber on drowning men, dragon prows splintering and the halls of the sea god filling with the souls of warriors and, though they were the enemy, I doubt any of us felt anything but pity. The sea gives a cold and lonely death.

Ragnar and Brida. I just gazed, but could Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom not distinguish one ship from another through the rain and broken sea. We did watch one ship, which seemed to have escaped, suddenly sink. One moment she was on a wave, spray flying from her hull, oars pulling her free, and next she was just gone. She vanished. Other ships were banging one another, oars tangling and splintering. Some tried to turn and run back to the Poole and many of those were driven ashore, some on the sands and some on the cliffs. A few ships, pitifully few, beat their way clear, men hauling on the oars in a frenzy, but all the Danish ships were overloaded, carrying men whose horses had died, carrying an army we knew not where, and that army now died.

We were south of the headland now, being driven fast to the west, and a Danish ship, smaller than ours, came close and the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom steersman looked across and gave a grim smile as if to acknowledge there was only one enemy now, the sea. The Dane drifted ahead of us, not slowed by trailing wreckage as we were. The rain hissed down, a malevolent rain, stinging on the wind, and the sea was full of planks, broken spars, dragon prows, long oars, shields, and corpses. I saw a dog swimming frantically, eyes white, and for a moment I thought it was Nihtgenga, then saw this dog had black ears while Nihtgenga had white. The clouds were the color of iron, ragged and low, and the water was being shredded into streams of white and green-black, and theHeahengel reared to each sea, crashed down into the troughs, and shook like a live thing with every blow, but she lived. She was well built, she kept us alive, and all the while we watched the Danish ships die and Father Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Willibald prayed.

Oddly his sickness had passed. He looked pale, and doubtless felt wretched, but as the storm pummeled us his vomiting ended and he even came to stand beside me, steadying himself by holding on to the steering oar.

"Who is the Danish god of the sea?" he asked me over the wind's noise.

"Njor!" I shouted back.

He grinned. "You pray to him and I'll pray to God."

I laughed. "If Alfred knew you'd said that you'd never become a bishop!"

"I won't become a bishop unless we survive this! So pray!"

I did pray, and slowly, reluctantly, the storm eased. Low clouds raced over the angry water, but the wind died and we could cut away the wreckage of mast and yard and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom unship the oars and turnHeahengel to the west and row through the flotsam of a shattered war fleet. A score of Danish ships were in front of us, and there were others behind us, but I guessed that at least half their fleet had sunk, perhaps more, and I felt an immense fear for Ragnar and Brida. We caught up with the smaller Danish ships and I steered close to as many as I could and shouted across the broken seas. "Did you seeWind-Viper?"

"No," they called back. No, came the answer, again and again. They knew we were an enemy ship, but did not care for there was no enemy out in that water except the water itself, and so we rowed on, a mastless ship, and left the Danes behind us, and as night fell, and as a streak of sunlight leaked like seeping blood into a rift of the western clouds, I steeredHeahengel into the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom crooked reach of the river Uisc, and once we were behind the headland the sea calmed and we rowed, suddenly safe, past the long spit of sand and turned into the river and I could look up into the darkening hills to where Oxton stood, and I saw no light there.

We beachedHeahengel and staggered ashore and some men knelt and kissed the ground while others made the sign of the cross. There was a small harbor in the wide river reach and some houses by the harbor and we filled them, demanded that fires were lit and food brought, and then, in the darkness, I went back outside and saw the sparks of light flickering upriver. I realized they were torches being burned on the remaining Danish boats that had somehow found their way into the Uisc and now rowed inland, going north toward Exanceaster, and I knew that was where Guthrum must have Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom ridden and that the Danes were there, and the fleet's survivors would thicken his army and Odda the Younger, if he lived, might well have tried to go there, too.

With Mildrith and my son. I touched Thor's hammer and prayed they were alive.

And then, as the dark boats passed upstream, I slept.

In the morning we pulledHeahengel into the small harbor where she could rest on the mud when the tide fell. We were forty-eight men, tired but alive. The sky was ribbed with clouds, high and gray-pink, scudding before the storm's dying wind, We walked to Oxton through woods full of bluebells. Did I expect to find Mildrith there? I think I did, but of course she was not. There was only Oswald the steward and the slaves and none of them knew what was happening.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Leofric insisted on a day to dry clothes, sharpen weapons, and fill bellies, but I was in no mood to rest so I took two men, Cenwulf and Ida, and walked north toward Exanceaster, which lay on the far side of the Uisc. The river settlements were empty for the folk had heard of the Danes coming and had fled into the hills, and so we walked the higher paths and asked them what happened, but they knew nothing except that there were dragon ships in the river, and we could see those for ourselves. There was a storm-battered fleet drawn up on the riverbank beneath Exanceaster's stone walls.

There were more ships than I had suspected, suggesting that a good part of Guthrum's fleet had survived by staying in the Poole when the storm struck, and a few of those ships were still arriving, their crews rowing up the narrow river. We counted hulls and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom reckoned there were close to ninety boats, which meant that almost half of Guthrum's fleet had survived, and I tried to distinguishWind-Viper 's hull among the others, but we were too far away.

Guthrum the Unlucky. How well he deserved that name, though in time he came close to earning a better, but for now he had been unfortunate indeed. He had broken out of Werham, had doubtless hoped to resupply his army in Exanceaster and then strike north, but the gods of sea and wind had struck him down and he was left with a crippled army. Yet it was still a strong army and, for the moment, safe behind Exanceaster's Roman walls.

I wanted to cross the river, but there were too many Danes by their ships, so we walked farther north and saw armed men on the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom road that led west from Exanceaster, a road that crossed the bridge beneath the city and led over the moors toward Cornwalum, and I stared a long time at those men, fearing they might be Danes, but they were staring east, suggesting that they watched the Danes and I guessed they were English and so we went down from the woods, shields slung on our backs to show we meant no harm.

There were eighteen men, led by a thegn named Withgil who had been the commander of Exanceaster's garrison and who had lost most of his men when Guthrum attacked. He was reluctant to tell the story, but it was plain that he had expected no trouble and had posted only a few guards on the eastern gate, and when they had seen the approaching horsemen the guards had thought they were English and so the Danes had been able to capture the gate and then Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom pierce the town. Withgil claimed to have made a fight at the fort in the town's center, but it was obvious from his men's embarrassment that it had been a pathetic resistance, if it amounted to any resistance at all, and the probable truth was that Withgil had simply run away.

"Was Odda there?" I asked.

"Ealdorman Odda?" Withgil asked. " Of course not."

"Where was he?"

Withgil frowned at me as if I had just come from the moon. "In the north, of course."

"The north of Defnascir?"

"He marched a week ago. He led the fyrd."

"Against Ubba?"

"That's what the king ordered," Withgil said. "So where's Ubba?" I demanded.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom It seemed that Ubba had brought his ships across the wide Sæfern sea and had landed far to the west in Defnascir. He had traveled before the storm struck, which suggested his army was intact, and Odda had been ordered north to block Ubba's advance into the rest of Wessex, and if Odda had marched a week ago then surely Odda the Younger would know that and would have ridden to join his father. Which suggested that Mildrith was there, wherever there was. I asked Withgil if he had seen Odda the Younger, but he said he had neither seen nor heard of him since Christmas.

"How many men does Ubba have?" I asked.

"Many," Withgil said, which was not helpful, but all he knew.

"Lord." Cenwulf touched my arm and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom pointed east and I saw horsemen appearing on the low fields that stretched from the river toward the hill on which Exanceaster is built.

A lot of horsemen, and behind them came a standard bearer and, though we were too far away to see the badge on the flag, the green and white proclaimed that it was the West Saxon banner. So Alfred had come here? It seemed likely, but I was in no mind to cross the river and find out. I was only interested in searching for Mildrith.

War is fought in mystery. The truth can take days to travel, and ahead of truth flies rumor, and it is ever hard to know what is really happening, and the art of it is to pluck the clean bone of fact from the rotting flesh of fear and lies.

So what did I know? That Guthrum had broken the truce and had taken Exanceaster, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom and that Ubba was in the north of Defnascir.

Which suggested that the Danes were trying to do what they had failed to do the previous year, split the West Saxon forces, and while Alfred faced one army the other would ravage the land or, perhaps, descend on Alfred's rear, and to prevent that the fyrd of Defnascir had been ordered to block Ubba.

Had that battle been fought? Was Odda alive? Was his son alive? Were Mildrith and my son alive? In any clash between Ubba and Odda I would have reckoned on Ubba.

He was a great warrior, a man of legend among the Danes, and Odda was a fussy, worried, graying, and aging man.

"We go north," I told Leofric when we were back at Oxton. I had no wish to see Alfred.

He would be besieging Guthrum, and if I walked into his camp he would doubtless order me to join the troops ringing the city Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom and I would sit there, wait, and worry. Better to go north and find Ubba.

So the next morning, under a spring sun, theHeahengel 's crew marched north.

The war was between the Danes and Wessex. My war was with Odda the Younger, and I knew I was driven by pride.

The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation and the Danes understood that. Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.

What do we look for in a lord? Strength, generosity, hardness, and success, and why should a man not be proud of those things?

Show me a humble warrior and I will see a corpse. Alfred preached humility, he even pretended to it, loving to appear in church Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom with bare feet and prostrating himself before the altar, but he never possessed true humility. He was proud, and men feared him because of it, and men should fear a lord.

They should fear his displeasure and fear that his generosity will cease. Reputation makes fear, and pride protects reputation, and I marched north because my pride was endangered. My woman and child had been taken from me, and I would take them back, and if they had been harmed then I would take my revenge and the stink of that man's blood would make other men fear me.

Wessex could fall for all I cared, my reputation was more important and so we marched, skirting Exanceaster, following a twisting cattle track into the hills until we reached Twyfyrde, a small place crammed with refugees from Exanceaster, and none of them had seen or heard news of Odda the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Younger, nor had they heard of any battle to the north, though a priest claimed that lightning had struck thrice in the previous night, which he swore was a sign that God had struck down the pagans.

From Twyfyrde we took paths that edged the great moor, walking through country that was deep-wooded, hilly, and lovely. We would have made better time if we had possessed horses, but we had none, and the few we saw were old and sick and there were never enough for all our men, so we walked, sleeping that night in a deep combe bright with blossom and sifted with bluebells, and a nightingale sang us to sleep and the dawn chorus woke us and we walked on beneath the white mayflower, and that afternoon we came to the hills above the northern shore and we met folk who had fled the coastal lands, bringing with them their Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom families and livestock, and their presence told us we must soon see the Danes.

I did not know it but the three spinners were making my fate. They were thickening the threads, twisting them tighter, making me into what I am, but staring down from that high hill I only felt a flicker of fear, for there was Ubba's fleet, rowing east, keeping pace with the horsemen and infantry who marched along the shore.

The folk who had fled their homes told us that the Danes had come from the Welsh lands across the wide Sæfern sea, and that they had landed at a place called Beardastopol, which lies far in Defnascir's west, and there they had collected horses and supplies, but then their attack eastward into the West Saxon heartland had been delayed by the great storm that had wrecked Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Guthrum's fleet. Ubba's ships had stayed in Beardastopol's harbor until the storm passed and then, inexplicably, they had still waited even when the weather improved and I guessed that Ubba, who would do nothing without the consent of the gods, had cast the runesticks, found them unfavorable, and so waited until the auguries were better. Now the runes must have been good for Ubba's army was on the move. I counted thirty-six ships, which suggested an army of at least twelve or thirteen hundred men.

"Where are they going?" One of my men asked.

"East," I grunted. What else could I say?

East into Wessex. East into the rich heartland of England's last kingdom. East to Wintanceaster or to any of the other plump towns where the churches, monasteries, and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom nunneries were brimming with treasure, east to where the plunder waited, east to where there was food and more horses, east to invite more Danes to come south across Mercia's frontier, and Alfred would be forced to turn around and face them, and then Guthrum's army would come from Exanceaster and the army of Wessex would be caught between two hosts of Danes, except that the fyrd of Defnascir was somewhere on this coast and it was their duty to stop Ubba's men.

We walked east, passing from Defnascir into Sumorsæte, and shadowing the Danes by staying on the higher ground, and that night I watched as Ubba's ships came inshore and the fires were lit in the Danish camp, and we lit our own fires deep in a wood and were marching again before dawn and thus got ahead of our enemies Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom and by midday we could see the first West Saxon forces. They were horsemen, presumably sent to scout the enemy, and they were now retreating from the Danish threat, and we walked until the hills dropped away to where a river flowed into the Sæfern sea, and it was there that we discovered that Ealdorman Odda had decided to make his stand, in a fort built by the old people on a hill near the river. The river was called the Pedredan and close to its mouth was a small place called Cantucton, and near Cantucton was the ancient earth-walled fort that the locals said was named Cynuit. It was old, that fort; Father Willibald said it was older than the Romans, that it had been old when the world was young, and the fort had been made by throwing up earth walls on a hilltop and digging a ditch outside the walls. Time had worked on those walls, wearing them Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom down and making the ditch shallower, and grass had overgrown the ramparts, and on one side the wall had been plowed almost to nothing, plowed until it was a mere shadow on the turf, but it was a fortress and the place where Ealdorman Odda had taken his forces and where he would die if he could not defeat Ubba, whose ships were already showing in the river's mouth.

I did not go straight to the fort, but stopped in the shelter of some trees and dressed for war. I became Ealdorman Uhtred in his battle glory. The slaves at Oxton had polished my mail coat with sand and I pulled it on, and over it I buckled a leather sword belt for Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting. I pulled on tall boots, put on the shining helmet, and picked up my iron-bossed shield and, when all the straps were tight and the buckles firm, I felt like a god dressed for war, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom dressed to kill. My men buckled their own straps, laced their boots, tested their weapons' edges, and even Father Willibald cut himself a stave, a great piece of ash that could break a man's skull. "You won't need to fight, father," I told him.

"We all have to fight now, lord," he said.

He took a step back and looked me up and down, and a small smile came to his face.

"You've grown up," he said.

"It's what we do, father," I said.

"I remember when I first saw you. A child.

Now I fear you."

"Let's hope the enemy does," I said, not quite sure what enemy I meant, whether Odda or Ubba, and I wished I had Bebbanburg's standard, the snarling wolf's head, but I had my swords and my shield and I led my men out of the wood and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom across the fields to where the fyrd of Defnascir would make its stand.

The Danes were a mile or so to our left, spilling from the coast road and hurrying to surround the hill called Cynuit, though they would be too late to bar our path. To my right were more Danes, ship Danes, bringing their dragon-headed boats up the Pedredan.

"They outnumber us," Willibald said.

"They do," I agreed. There were swans on the river, corncrakes in the uncut hay, and crimson orchids in the meadows. This was the time of year when men should be haymaking or shearing their sheep.I need not be here, I thought to myself.I need not go to this hilltop where the Danes will come to kill us. I looked at my men and wondered if they thought the same, but when they caught my eye they only grinned, or nodded, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom and I suddenly realized that they trusted me.

I was leading them and they were not questioning me, though Leofric understood the danger. He caught up with me.

"There's only one way off that hilltop," he said softly.

"I know."

"And if we can't fight our way out," he said,

"then we'll stay there. Buried."

"I know," I said again, and I thought of the spinners and knew they were tightening the threads, and I looked up Cynuit's slope and saw there were some women at the very top, women being sheltered by their men, and I thought Mildrith might be among them, and that was why I climbed the hill: because I did not know where else to seek her.

But the spinners were sending me to that old earth fort for another reason. I had yet to Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom stand in the big shield wall, in the line of warriors, in the heave and horror of a proper battle where to kill once is merely to invite another enemy to come. The hill of Cynuit was the road to full manhood and I climbed it because I had no choice; the spinners sent me.

Then a roar sounded to our right, down in the Pedredan's valley, and I saw a banner being raised beside a beached ship. It was the banner of the raven. Ubba's banner.

Ubba, last and strongest and most frightening of the sons of Lothbrok, had brought his blades to Cynuit. "You see that boat?" I said to Willibald, pointing to where the banner flew. "Ten years ago," I said, "I cleaned that ship. I scoured it, scrubbed it, cleaned it." Danes were taking their shields from the shield strake and the sun glinted on their myriad spear blades. "I was ten years Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom old," I told Willibald.

"The same boat?" he asked.

"Maybe. Maybe not." Perhaps it was a new ship. It did not matter, really. All that mattered was that it had brought Ubba.

To Cynuit.

The men of Defnascir had made a line where the old fort's wall had eroded away.

Some, a few, had spades and were trying to remake the earth barrier, but they would not be given time to finish, not if Ubba assaulted the hill, and I pushed through them, using my shield to thrust men out of my way and ignoring all those who questioned who we were, and so we made our way to the hill's summit where Odda's banner of a black stag flew.

I pulled off my helmet as I neared him. I tossed the helmet to Father Willibald, then Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom drew Serpent-Breath for I had seen Odda the Younger standing beside his father, and he was staring at me as though I were a ghost, and to him I must have appeared just that. "Where is she?" I shouted, and I pointed Serpent-Breath at him. "Where is she?"

Odda's retainers drew swords or leveled spears, and Leofric drew his battle-thinned blade, Dane-Killer.

"No!" Father Willibald shouted and he ran forward, his staff raised in one hand and my helmet in the other. "No!" He tried to head me off, but I pushed him aside, only to find three of Odda's priests barring my way. That was one thing about Wessex, there were always priests. They appeared like mice out of a burning thatch, but I thrust the priests aside and confronted Odda the Younger.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "Where is she?" I demanded.

Odda the Younger was in mail, mail so brightly polished that it hurt the eye. He had a helmet inlaid with silver, boots to which iron plates were strapped, and a blue cloak held about his neck by a great brooch of gold and amber.

"Where is she?" I asked a fourth time, and this time Serpent-Breath was a hand's length from his throat.

"Your wife is at Cridianton," Ealdorman Odda answered. His son was too scared to open his mouth. I had no idea where Cridianton was. "And my son?" I stared into Odda the Younger's frightened eyes.

"Where is my son?"

"They are both with my wife at Cridianton,"

Ealdorman Odda answered, "and they are safe."

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "You swear to that?" I asked.

"Swear?" The ealdorman was angry now, his ugly, bulbous face red. "You dare ask me to swear?" He drew his own sword. "We can cut you down like a dog," he said and his men's swords twitched.

I swept my own sword around till it pointed down to the river. "You know whose banner that is?" I asked, raising my voice so that a good portion of the men on Cynuit's hill could hear me. "That is the raven banner of Ubba Lothbrokson. I have watched Ubba Lothbrokson kill. I have seen him trample men into the sea, cut their bellies open, take off their heads, wade in their blood, and make his sword screech with their death song, and you would kill me who is ready to fight him alongside you? Then do it." I spread my arms, baring my body to the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom ealdorman's sword. "Do it," I spat at him,

"but first swear my wife and child are safe."

He paused a long time, then lowered his blade. "They are safe," he said, "I swear it."

"And that thing," I pointed Serpent-Breath at his son, "did not touch her?"

The ealdorman looked at his son who shook his head. "I swear I did not," Odda the Younger said, finding his voice. "I only wanted her to be safe. We thought you were dead and I wanted her to be safe. That is all, I swear it."

I sheathed Serpent-Breath. "You owe my wife eighteen shillings," I said to the ealdorman, then turned away.

I had come to Cynuit. I had no need to be on that hilltop. But I was there. Because destiny is everything.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom

"Alfred," I pointed out, "is besieging Exanceaster."

"He will leave men there to watch Guthrum," Odda said loftily, "and march here." He did not like talking to me, but I was an ealdorman and he could not bar me from his council of war that was attended by Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom his son, the priests, and a dozen thegns, all of whom were becoming irritated by my comments. I insisted Alfred would not come to our relief, and Ealdorman Odda was refusing to move from the hilltop because he was sure Alfred would come. His thegns, all of them big men with heavy coats of mail and grim, weather-hardened faces, agreed with him. One muttered that the women had to be protected.

"There shouldn't be any women here," I said.

"But they are here," the man said flatly. At least a hundred women had followed their men and were now on the hilltop where there was no shelter for them or their children. "And even if Alfred comes," I asked, "how long will it take?"

"Two days?" Odda suggested. "Three?"

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "And what will we drink while he's coming?" I asked. "Bird piss?"

They all just stared at me, hating me, but I was right for there was no spring on Cynuit.

The nearest water was the river, and between us and the river were Danes, and Odda understood well enough that we would be assailed by thirst, but he still insisted we stay.

Perhaps his priests were praying for a miracle.

The Danes were just as cautious. They outnumbered us, but not by many, and we held the high ground, which meant they would have to fight up Cynuit's steep slope, and so Ubba chose to surround the hill rather than assault it. The Danes hated losing men, and I remembered Ubba's caution at the Gewæsc where he had hesitated to attack Edmund's forces up the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom two paths from the marsh, and perhaps that caution was reinforced by Storri, his sorcerer, if Storri still lived. Whatever the reason, instead of forming his men into the shield wall to assault the ancient fort, Ubba posted them in a ring about Cynuit and then, with five of his shipmasters, climbed the hill. He carried no sword or shield, which showed he wanted to talk.

Ealdorman Odda, his son, two thegns, and three priests went to meet Ubba and, because I was an ealdorman, I followed them. Odda gave me a malevolent look, but again he was unable to deny me, and so we met halfway down the slope where Ubba offered no greeting and did not even waste time on the usual ritual insults, but pointed out that we were trapped and that our wisest course was to surrender. "You will give up your weapons," he said. "I shall take Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom hostages, and you will all live."

One of Odda's priests translated the demands to the ealdorman. I watched Ubba.

He looked older than I remembered, with gray hairs among the black tangle of his beard, but he was still a frightening man: huge chested, confident, and harsh.

Ealdorman Odda was plainly frightened.

Ubba, after all, was a renowned Danish chieftain, a man who had ranged across long seas to give great slaughter, and now Odda was forced to confront him. He did his best to sound defiant, retorting that he would stay where he was and put his faith in the one true god.

"Then I shall kill you," Ubba answered.

"You may try," Odda said.

It was a feeble response and Ubba spat in scorn. He was about to turn away, but then I Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom spoke and needed no interpreter.

"Guthrum's fleet is gone," I said. "Njord reached from the deep, Ubba Lothbrokson, and he snatched Guthrum's fleet down to the seabed. All those brave men are gone to Ran and Ægir." Ran was Njord's wife and Ægir the giant who guarded the souls of drowned men. I brought out my hammer charm and held it up. "I speak the truth, Lord Ubba," I said. "I watched that fleet die and I saw its men go under the waves."

He stared at me with his flat, hard eyes and the violence in his heart was like the heat of a forge. I could feel it, but I could also sense his fear, not of us, but of the gods. He was a man who did nothing without a sign from the gods, and that was why I had talked of the gods when I spoke about the fleet's drowning. "I know you," he growled, pointing at me with two fingers to avert the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom evil of my words.

"And I know you, Ubba Lothbrokson," I said, and I let go of the charm and held up three fingers. "Ivar dead," I folded one finger down, "Halfdan dead," the second finger,

"and only you are left. What did the runes say? That by the new moon there will be no Lothbrok brother left in Midgard?"

I had touched a nerve, as I intended to, for Ubba instinctively felt for his own hammer charm. Odda's priest was translating, his voice a low murmur, and the ealdorman was staring at me with wide astonished eyes.

"Is that why you want us to surrender?" I asked Ubba. "Because the runesticks tell you we cannot be killed in battle?"

"I shall kill you," Ubba said. "I shall cut you from your crotch to your gullet. I shall spill you like offal."

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom I made myself smile, though that was hard when Ubba was making threats. "You may try, Ubba Lothbrokson," I said, "but you will fail. And I know. I cast the runes, Ubba. I cast the runes under last night's moon, and I know."

He hated it, for he believed my lie. He wanted to be defiant, but for a moment he could only stare at me in fear because his own rune-sticks, I guessed, had told him what I was telling him, that any attack on Cynuit would end in failure. "You're Ragnar's boy," he said, placing me at last.

"And Ragnar the Fearless speaks to me," I said. "He calls from the corpse hall. He wants vengeance, Ubba, vengeance on the Danes, for Ragnar was killed treacherously by his own folk. I'm his messenger now, a thing from the corpse hall, and I have come Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom for you."

"I didn't kill him!" Ubba snarled.

"Why should Ragnar care?" I asked. "He just wants vengeance and to him one Danish life is as good as another, so cast your runes again and then offer us your sword. You are doomed, Ubba."

"And you're a piece of weasel shit," he said and said no more, but just turned and hurried away.

Ealdorman Odda was still staring at me.

"You know him?" he asked.

"I've known Ubba since I was ten years old," I said, watching the Danish chieftain walk away. I was thinking that if I had a choice, that if I could follow my warrior's heart, I would rather fight alongside Ubba than against him, but the spinners had decreed otherwise. "Since I was ten," I went Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom on, "and the one thing I know about Ubba is that he fears the gods. He's terrified now.

You can attack him and his heart will let him down because he thinks he will lose."

"Alfred will come," Odda said.

"Alfred watches Guthrum," I said. I was not certain of that, of course. For all I knew Alfred could be watching us now from the hills, but I doubted he would leave Guthrum free to plunder Wessex. "He watches Guthrum," I said, "because Guthrum's army is twice as large as Ubba's. Even with his fleet half drowned Guthrum has more men, and why would Alfred let them loose from Exanceaster? Alfred won't come," I finished,

"and we shall all die of thirst before Ubba attacks us."

"We have water," his son said sulkily, "and ale." He had been watching me resentfully, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom awed that I had spoken so familiarly with Ubba.

"You have ale and water for a day," I said scornfully and saw from the ealdorman's expression that I was right.

Odda turned and stared south down the Pedredan's valley. He was hoping to see Alfred's troops, yearning for a glimpse of sunlight on spear heads, but of course there was nothing there except the trees stirring in the wind.

Odda the Younger sensed his father's uncertainty. "We can wait for two days," he urged.

"Death will be no better after two days,"

Odda said heavily. I admired him then. He had been hoping not to fight, hoping that his king would rescue him, but in his heart he knew I was right and knew that these Danes Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom were his responsibility and that the men of Defnascir held England in their hands and must preserve it. "Dawn," he said, not looking at me. "We shall attack at dawn."

We slept in war gear. Or rather men tried to sleep when they were wearing leather or mail, with sword belts buckled, helmets, and weapons close, and we lit no fires for Odda did not want the enemy to see that we were readied for battle, but the enemy had fires, and our sentries could watch down the slopes and use the enemy's light to look for infiltrators. None came. There was a waning moon sliding in and out of ragged clouds.

The Danish fires ringed us, heaviest to the south by Cantucton where Guthrum camped. More fires burned to the east, beside the Danish ships, the flames reflecting off the gilded beast heads and painted dragon prows. Between us and the river was Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom a meadow at the far side of which the Danes watched the hill, and beyond them was a wide stretch of marsh and at the marsh's far side was a strip of firmer land beside the river where some hovels offered the Danish ship-guards shelter. The hovels had belonged to fishermen, long fled, and fires were lit between them. A handful of Danes paced the bank beside those fires, walking beneath the carved prows, and I stood on the ramparts and gazed at those long, graceful ships and prayed thatWind-Viper still lived.

I could not sleep. I was thinking of shields and Danes and swords and fear. I was thinking of my child that I had never seen and of Ragnar the Fearless, wondering if he watched me from Valhalla. I was worrying that I would fail the next day when, at last, I came to the life gate of a shield wall, and I Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom was not the only one denied sleep for, at the heart of the night, a man climbed the grassy rampart to stand beside me and I saw it was Ealdorman Odda. "How do you know Ubba?" he asked.

"I was captured by the Danes," I said, "and was raised by them. The Danes taught me to fight." I touched one of my arm rings. "Ubba gave me this one."

"You fought for him?" Odda asked, not accusingly, but with curiosity.

"I fought to survive," I said evasively.

He looked back to the moon-touched river.

"When it comes to a fight," he said, "the Danes are no fools. They will be expecting an attack at dawn." I said nothing, wondering whether Odda's fears were changing his mind. "And they outnumber us," he went on.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom I still said nothing. Fear works on a man, and there is no fear like the prospect of confronting a shield wall. I was filled with fear that night, for I had never fought man to man in the clash of armies. I had been at Æsc's Hill, and at the other battles of that far-off summer, but I had not fought in the shield wall. Tomorrow, I thought, tomorrow, and like Odda I wanted to see Alfred's army rescue us, but I knew there would be no rescue. "They outnumber us," Odda said again, "and some of my men have nothing but reaping hooks as weapons."

"A reaping hook can kill," I said, though it was a stupid thing to say. I would not want to face a Dane if I carried nothing but a reaping hook. "How many have proper weapons?" I asked.

"Half?" he guessed.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "Then those men are our front ranks," I said, "and the rest pick up weapons from the enemy dead." I had no idea what I was speaking of, but only knew I must sound confident. Fear might work on a man, but confidence fights against fear.

Odda paused again, gazing at the dark ships below. "Your wife and son are well," he said after a while.

"Good."

"My son merely rescued her."

"And prayed I was dead," I said.

He shrugged. "Mildrith lived with us after her father's death and my son became fond of her. He meant no harm and he gave none." He held a hand out to me and I saw, in the small moonlight, that he offered me a leather purse. "The rest of the bride-price," he said.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "Keep it, lord," I said, "and give it to me after the battle, and if I die, give it to Mildrith."

An owl went overhead, pale and fast, and I wondered what augury that was. Far off to the east, up the coast, far beyond the Pedredan, a tiny fire flickered and that, too, was an augury, but I could not read it.

"My men are good men," Odda said, "but if they are out-flanked?" Fear was still haunting him. "It would be better," he went on, "if Ubba were to attack us."

"It would be better," I agreed, "but Ubba will do nothing unless the runesticks tell him to do it."

Fate is all. Ubba knew that, which is why he read the signs from the gods, and I knew the owl had been a sign, and it had flown over our heads, across the Danish ships, and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom gone toward that distant fire burning along the Sæfern's shore, and I suddenly remembered King Edmund's four boats coming to the East Anglian beach and the fire arrows thumping into the beached Danish ships and I realized I could read the auguries after all. "If your men are outflanked," I said, "they will die. But if the Danes are outflanked, they will die. So we must outflank them."

"How?" Odda asked bitterly. All he could see was slaughter in the dawn-an attack, a fight, and a defeat-but I had seen the owl.

The owl had flown from the ships to the fire, and that was the sign. Burn the ships. "How do we outflank them?" Odda asked.

And still I remained silent, wondering if I should tell him. If I followed the augury it would mean splitting our forces, and that Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom was the mistake the Danes had made at Æsc's Hill, and so I hesitated, but Odda had not come to me because he suddenly liked me, but because I had been defiant with Ubba. I alone on Cynuit was confident of victory, or seemed to be, and that, despite my age, made me the leader on this hill.

Ealdorman Odda, old enough to be my father, wanted my support. He wanted me to tell him what to do, me who had never been in a great shield wall, but I was young and I was arrogant and the auguries had told me what must be done, and so I told Odda.

"Have you ever seen the sceadugengan?" I asked him.

His response was to make the sign of the cross.

"When I was a child," I said, "I dreamed of the sceadugengan. I went out at night to find Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom them and I learned the ways of the night so I could join them."

"What has that to do with the dawn?" he asked.

"Give me fifty men," I said, "and they will join my men and at dawn they will attack there." I pointed toward the ships. "We'll start by burning their ships."

Odda looked down the hill at the nearer fires, which marked where the enemy sentries were posted in the meadow to our east.

"They'll know you're coming," he said, "and be ready for you." He meant that a hundred men could not cross Cynuit's skyline, go downhill, break through the sentries, and cross the marsh in silence. He was right.

Before we had gone ten paces the sentries would have seen us and the alarm would be sounded and Ubba's army, which was surely Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom as ready for battle as our own, would stream from its southern encampment to confront my men in the meadow before they reached the marsh.

"But when the Danes see their ships burning," I said, "they will go to the river's bank, not to the meadow. And the riverbank is hemmed by marsh. They can't outflank us there." They could, of course, but the marsh would give them uncertain footing so it would not be so dangerous as being outflanked in the meadow.

"But you will never reach the riverbank," he said, disappointed in my idea.

"A shadow-walker can reach it," I said.

He looked at me and said nothing.

"I can reach it," I said, "and when the first ship burns every Dane will run to the bank, and that's when the hundred men make their Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom charge. The Danes will be running to save their ships, and that will give the hundred men time to cross the marsh. They go as fast as they can, they join me, we burn more ships, and the Danes will be trying to kill us."

I pointed to the riverbank, showing where the Danes would go from their camp along the strip of firm ground to where the ships were beached. "And when the Danes are all on that bank," I went on, "between the river and the marsh, you lead the fyrd to take them in the rear."

He brooded, watching the ships. If we attacked at all then the obvious place was down the southern slope, straight into the heart of Ubba's forces, and that would be a battle of shield wall against shield wall, our nine hundred men against his twelve hundred, and at the beginning we would have the advantage for many of Ubba's men Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom were posted around the hill and it would take time for those men to hurry back and join the Danish ranks, and in that time we would drive deep into their camp, but their numbers would grow and we might well be stopped, outflanked, and then would come the hard slaughter. And in that hard slaughter they would have the advantage of numbers and they would wrap around our ranks and our rearmost men, those with sickles instead of weapons, would begin to die.

But if I went down the hill and began to burn the boats, then the Danes would race down the riverbank to stop me, and that would put them on the narrow strip of riverside land, and if the hundred men under Leofric joined me, then we might hold them long enough for Odda to reach their rear and then it would be the Danes who would Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom die, trapped between Odda, my men, the marsh, and the river. They would be trapped like the Northumbrian army had been trapped at Eoferwic.

But at Æsc's Hill disaster had come to the side that first split its forces.

"It could work," Odda said tentatively.

"Give me fifty men," I urged him, "young ones."

"Young?"

"They have to run down the hill," I said.

"They have to go fast. They have to reach the ships before the Danes, and they must do it in the dawn." I spoke with a confidence I did not feel and I paused for his agreement, but he said nothing. "Win this, lord," I said, and I did not call him "lord" because he outranked me, but because he was older than me, "then you will have Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom saved Wessex. Alfred will reward you."

He thought for a while and maybe it was the thought of a reward that persuaded him, for he nodded. "I will give you fifty men," he said.

Ravn had given me much advice and all of it was good, but now, in the night wind, I remembered just one thing he had said to me on the night we first met, something I had never forgotten.

Never, he had said, never fight Ubba.

The fifty men were led by the shire reeve, Edor, a man who looked as hard as Leofric and, like Leofric, had fought in the big shield walls. He carried a cutoff boar spear as his favorite weapon, though a sword was strapped to his side. The spear, he said, had the weight and strength to punch through mail and could even break through a shield.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Edor, like Leofric, had simply accepted my idea. It never occurred to me that they might not accept it, yet looking back I am astonished that the battle of Cynuit was fought according to the idea of a twentyyear-old who had never stood in a slaughter wall. Yet I was tall, I was a lord, I had grown up among warriors, and I had the arrogant confidence of a man born to battle. I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, son of another Uhtred, and we had not held Bebbanburg and its lands by whimpering at altars. We are warriors.

Edor's men and mine assembled behind Cynuit's eastern rampart where they would wait until the first ship burned in the dawn.

Leofric was on the right with theHeahengel 's crew, and I wanted him there because that was where the blow would fall when Ubba led his men to attack us at the river's edge.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Edor and the men of Defnascir were on the left and their chief job, apart from killing whomever they first met on the riverbank, was to snatch up flaming timbers from the Danish fires and hurl them into more ships.

"We're not trying to burn all the ships," I said. "Just get four or five ablaze. That'll bring the Danes like a swarm of bees."

"Stinging bees," a voice said from the dark.

"You're frightened?" I asked scornfully.

"They're frightened! Their auguries are bad, they think they're going to lose, and the last thing they want is to face men of Defnascir in a gray dawn. We'll make them scream like women, we'll kill them, and we'll send them to their Danish hell." That was the extent of my battle speech. I should have talked more, but I was nervous because I had to go down the hill first, first and alone. I had to live my Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom childhood dream of shadow-walking, and Leofric and Edor would not lead the hundred men down to the river until they saw the Danes go to rescue their ships, and if I could not touch fire to the ships then there would be no attack and Odda's fears would come back and the Danes would win and Wessex would die and there would be no more England. "So rest now," I finished lamely. "It will be three or four hours till dawn."

I went back to the rampart and Father Willibald joined me there, holding out his crucifix that had been carved from an ox's thigh bone. "You want God's blessing?" he asked me.

"What I want, father," I said, "is your cloak." He had a fine woolen cloak, hooded and dyed a dark brown. He gave it me and I tied the cords around my neck, hiding the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom sheen of my mail coat. "And in the dawn, father," I said, "I want you to stay up here.

The riverbank will be no place for priests."

"If men die there," he said, "then it is my place."

"You want to go to heaven in the morning?"

"No."

"Then stay here." I spoke more savagely than I intended, but that was nervousness, and then it was time to go for, though the night was still dark and the dawn a long way off, I needed time to slink through the Danish lines. Leofric saw me off, walking with me to the northern flank of Cynuit, which was in moon-cast shadow. It was also the least guarded side of the hill, for the northern slope led to nothing except marshes and the Sæfern sea. I gave Leofric my shield.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "I don't need it," I said. "It will just make me clumsy."

He touched my arm. "You're a cocky bastard, earsling, aren't you?"

"Is that a fault?"

"No, lord," he said, and that last word was high praise. "God go with you," he added,

"whichever god it is."

I touched Thor's hammer, then tucked it under my mail. "Bring the men fast when you see the Danes go to the ships," I said.

"We'll come fast," he promised me, "if the marsh lets us."

I had seen Danes cross the marsh in the daylight and had noted that it was soft ground, but not rank bogland. "You can cross it fast," I said, then pulled the cloak's hood over my helmet. "Time to go," I said.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Leofric said nothing and I dropped down from the rampart into the shallow ditch. So now I would become what I had always wanted to be, a shadow-walker. Childhood's dream had become life and death, and touching Serpent-Breath's hilt for luck, I crossed the ditch's lip. I went at a crouch, and halfway down the hill I dropped to my belly and slithered like a serpent, black against the grass, inching my way toward a space between two dying fires.

The Danes were sleeping, or close to sleep.

I could see them sitting by the dying fires, and once I was out of the hill's shadow there was enough moonlight to reveal me and there was no cover for the meadow had been cropped by sheep, but I moved like a ghost, a belly-crawling ghost, inching my way, making no noise, a shadow on the grass, and all they had to do was look, or Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom walk between the fires, but they heard nothing, suspected nothing, and so saw nothing. It took an age, but I slipped through them, never going closer to an enemy than twenty paces, and once past them I was in the marsh and there the tussocks offered shadow and I could move faster, wriggling through slime and shallow water, and the only scare came when I startled a bird from its nest and it leapt into the air with a cry of alarm and a swift whirr of wings. I sensed the Danes staring toward the marsh, but I was motionless, black, and unmoving in the broken shadow, and after a while there was only silence. I waited, water seeping through my mail, and I prayed to Hoder, blind son of Odin and god of the night. Look after me, I prayed, and I wished I had made a sacrifice to Hoder, but I had not, and I thought that Ealdwulf would be looking down at me and I Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom vowed to make him proud. I was doing what he had always wanted me to do, carrying Serpent-Breath against the Danes.

I worked my way eastward, behind the sentries, going to where the ships were beached. No gray showed in the eastern sky.

I still went slowly, staying on my belly, going slowly enough for the fears to work on me. I was aware of a muscle quivering in my right thigh, of a thirst that could not be quenched, of a sourness in the bowels. I kept touching Serpent-Breath's hilt, remembering the charms that Ealdwulf and Brida had worked on the blade. Never, Ravn had said, never fight Ubba.

The east was still dark. I crept on, close to the sea now so I could gaze up the wide Sæfern and see nothing except the shimmer of the sinking moon on the rippled water that Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom looked like a sheet of hammered silver. The tide was flooding, the muddy shore narrowing as the sea rose. There would be salmon in the Pedredan, I thought, salmon swimming with the tide, going back to the sea, and I touched the sword hilt for I was close to the strip of firm land where the hovels stood and the ship guards waited. My thigh shivered. I felt sick.

But blind Hoder was watching over me. The ship guards were no more alert than their comrades at the hill's foot, and why should they be? They were farther from Odda's forces, and they expected no trouble; indeed they were there only because the Danes never left their ships unguarded, and these ship guards had mostly gone into the fishermen's hovels to sleep, leaving just a handful of men sitting by the small fires.

Those men were motionless, probably half Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom asleep, though one was pacing up and down beneath the high prows of the beached ships.

I stood.

I had shadow-walked, but now I was on Danish ground, behind their sentries, and I undid the cloak's cords, took it off, and wiped the mud from my mail, and then walked openly toward the ships, my boots squelching in the last yards of marshland, and then I just stood by the northernmost boat, threw my helmet down in the shadow of the ship, and waited for the one Dane who was on his feet to discover me.

And what would he see? A man in mail, a lord, a shipmaster, a Dane, and I leaned on the ship's prow and stared up at the stars.

My heart thumped, my thigh quivered, and I thought that if I died this morning at least I Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom would be with Ragnar again. I would be with him in Valhalla's hall of the dead, except some men believed that those who did not die in battle went instead to Niflheim, that dreadful cold hell of the Norsemen where the corpse goddess Hel stalks through the mists and the serpent Corpse-Ripper slithers across the frost to gnaw the dead, but surely, I thought, a man who died in a hall-burning would go to Valhalla, not to gray Niflheim.

Surely Ragnar was with Odin, and then I heard the Dane's footsteps and I glanced at him with a smile. "A chilly morning," I said.

"It is." He was an older man with a grizzled beard and he was plainly puzzled by my sudden appearance, but he was not suspicious. "All quiet," I said, jerking my head to the north to suggest I had been visiting the sentries on the Sæfern's side of the hill.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "They're frightened of us," he said.

"So they should be." I faked a huge yawn, then pushed myself away from the ship and walked a couple of paces north as though I was stretching tired limbs, then pretended to notice my helmet at the water's edge.

"What's that?"

He took the bait, going into the ship's shadow to bend over the helmet, and I drew my knife, stepped close to him, and drove the blade up into his throat. I did not slit his throat, but stabbed it, plunging the blade straight in and twisting it and at the same time I pushed him forward, driving his face into the water and I held him there so that if he did not bleed to death he would drown, and it took a long time, longer than I expected, but men are hard to kill. He struggled for a time and I thought the noise Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom he made might bring the men from the nearest fire, but that fire was forty or fifty paces down the beach and the small waves of the river were loud enough to cover the Dane's death throes, and so I killed him and no one knew of it, none but the gods saw it, and when his soul was gone I pulled the knife from his throat, retrieved my helmet, and went back to the ship's prow.

And waited there until dawn lightened the eastern horizon. Waited till there was a rim of gray at the edge of England.

And it was time.

I strolled toward the nearest fire. Two men sat there. "Kill one," I sang softly, "and two then three, kill four and five, and then some more." It was a Danish rowing chant, one that I had heard so often on the Wind-Viper.

"You'll be relieved soon," I greeted them Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom cheerfully.

They just stared at me. They did not know who I was, but just like the man I had killed, they were not suspicious even though I spoke their tongue with an English twist. There were plenty of English in the Danish armies.

"A quiet night," I said, and leaned down and took the unburned end of a piece of flaming wood from the fire. "Egil left a knife on his ship," I explained, and Egil was a common enough name among the Danes to arouse no suspicion, and they just watched as I walked north, presuming I needed the flame to light my way onto the ships. I passed the hovels, nodded to three men resting beside another fire, and kept walking until I had reached the center of the line of beached ships. There, whistling softly as though I did not have a care in the world, I Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom climbed the short ladder left leaning on the ship's prow and jumped down into the hull and made my way between the rowers' benches. I had half expected to find men asleep in the ships, but the boat was deserted except for the scrabble of rats' feet in the bilge.

I crouched in the ship's belly where I thrust the burning wood beneath the stacked oars, but I doubted it would be sufficient to set those oars aflame and so I used my knife to shave kindling off a rower's bench. When I had enough scraps of wood, I piled them over the flame and saw the fire spring up. I cut more, then hacked at the oar shafts to give the flames purchase, and no one shouted at me from the bank. Anyone watching must have thought I merely searched the bilge and the flames were still not high enough to cause alarm, but they Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom were spreading and I knew I had very little time and so I sheathed the knife and slid over the boat's side. I lowered myself into the Pedredan, careless what the water would do to my mail and weapons, and once in the river I waded northward from ship's stern to ship's stern, until at last I had cleared the last boat and had come to where the graybearded corpse was thumping softly in the river's small waves, and there I waited.

And waited. The fire, I thought, must have gone out. I was cold.

And still I waited. The gray on the world's rim lightened, and then, suddenly, there was an angry shout and I moved out of the shadow and saw the Danes running toward the flames that were bright and high on the ship I had fired, and so I went to their abandoned fire and took another burning Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom brand and hurled that into a second ship, and the Danes were scrambling onto the burning boat that was sixty paces away and none saw me. Then a horn sounded, sounded again and again, sounding the alarm, and I knew Ubba's men would be coming from their camp at Cantucton, and I carried a last piece of fiery wood to the ships, burning my hand as I thrust it under a pile of oars. Then I waded back into the river to hide beneath the shadowed belly of a boat.

The horn still sounded. Men were scrambling from the fishermen's hovels, going to save their fleet, and more men were running from their camp to the south, and so Ubba's Danes fell into our trap. They saw their ships burning and went to save them.

They streamed from the camp in disorder, many without weapons, intent only on Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom quenching the flames that flickered up the rigging and threw lurid shadows on the bank. I was hidden, but knew Leofric would be coming, and now it was all timing.

Timing and the blessing of the spinners, the blessing of the gods, and the Danes were using their shields to scoop water into the first burning ship, but then another shout sounded and I knew they had seen Leofric, and he had surely burst past the first line of sentries, slaughtering them as he went, and was now in the marsh. I waded out of the shadow, out from beneath the ship's overhanging hull, and saw Leofric's men coming, saw thirty or forty Danes running north to meet his charge, but then those Danes saw the new fires in the northernmost ships and they were assailed by panic because there was fire behind them and warriors in front of them, and most of the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom other Danes were still a hundred paces away and I knew that so far the gods were fighting for us.

I waded from the water. Leofric's men were coming from the marsh and the first swords and spears clashed, but Leofric had the advantage of numbers andHeahengel 's crew overran the handful of Danes, chopping them with ax and sword, and one crewman turned fast, panic in his face when he saw me coming, and I shouted my name, stooped to pick up a Danish shield, and Edor's men were behind us and I called to them to feed the ship fires while the men ofHeahengel formed a shield wall across the strip of firm land. Then we walked forward.

Walked toward Ubba's army that was only just realizing that they were being attacked.

We marched forward. A woman scrambled Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom from a hovel, screamed when she saw us, and fled up the bank toward the Danes where a man was roaring at men to form a shield wall. "Edor!" I shouted, knowing we would need his men now, and he brought them to thicken our line so that we made a solid shield wall across the strip of firm land, and we were a hundred strong and in front of us was the whole Danish army, though it was an army in panicked disorder, and I glanced up at Cynuit and saw no sign of Odda's men. They would come, I thought, they would surely come, and then Leofric bellowed that we were to touch shields, and the limewood rattled on limewood and I sheathed Serpent-Breath and drew WaspSting.

Shield wall. It is an awful place, my father had said, and he had fought in seven shield walls and was killed in the last one. Never Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom fight Ubba, Ravn had said.

Behind us the northernmost ships burned and in front of us a rush of maddened Danes came for revenge and that was their undoing, for they did not form a proper shield wall, but came at us like mad dogs, intent only on killing us, sure they could beat us for they were Danes and we were West Saxons, and we braced and I watched a scar-faced man, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed, charge at me and it was then that the battle calm came. Suddenly there was no more sourness in my bowels, no dry mouth, no shaking muscles, but only the magical battle calm. I was happy.

I was tired, too. I had not slept. I was soaking wet. I was cold, yet suddenly I felt invincible. It is a wondrous thing, that battle calm. The nerves go, the fear wings off into Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom the void, and all is clear as precious crystal and the enemy has no chance because he is so slow, and I swept the shield left, taking the scar-faced man's spear thrust, lunged Wasp-Sting forward, and the Dane ran onto her point. I felt the impact run up my arm as her tip punctured his belly muscles, and I was already twisting her, ripping her up and free, sawing through leather, skin, muscle, and guts, and his blood was warm on my cold hand, and he screamed, ale breath in my face, and I punched him down with the shield's heavy boss, stamped on his groin, killed him with Wasp-Sting's tip in his throat, and a second man was on my right, beating at my neighbor's shield with an ax, and he was easy to kill, point into the throat, and then we were going forward. A woman, hair unbound, came at me with a spear and I kicked her brutally hard, then smashed her Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom face with the shield's iron rim so that she fell screaming into a dying fire and her unbound hair flared up bright as burning kindling, andHeahengel 's crew was with me, and Leofric was bellowing at them to kill and to kill fast. This was our chance to slaughter Danes who had made a foolish attack on us, who had not formed a proper shield wall, and it was ax work and sword work, butchers' work with good iron, and already there were thirty or more Danish dead and seven ships were burning, their flames spreading with astonishing speed.

"Shield wall!" I heard the cry from the Danes. The world was light now, the sun just beneath the horizon. The northernmost ships had become a furnace. A dragon's head reared in the smoke, its gold eyes bright.

Gulls screamed above the beach. A dog chased along the ships, yelping. A mast fell, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom spewing sparks high into the silver air, and then I saw the Danes make their shield wall, saw them organize themselves for our deaths, and saw the raven banner, the triangle of cloth that proclaimed that Ubba was here and coming to give us slaughter.

"Shield wall!" I shouted, and that was the first time I ever gave that order. "Shield wall!" We had grown ragged, but now it was time to be tight. To be shield to shield. There were hundreds of Danes in front of us and they came to overwhelm us, and I banged Wasp-Sting against the metal rim of my shield. "They're coming to die!" I shouted.

"They're coming to bleed! They're coming to our blades!"

My men cheered. We had started a hundred strong but had lost half a dozen men in the early fighting. The remaining men Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom cheered even though five or six times their number came to kill them, and Leofric began the battle chant of Hegga, an English rower's chant, rhythmic and harsh, telling of a battle fought by our ancestors against the men who had held Britain before we came, and now we fought for our land again, and behind me a lone voice uttered a prayer and I turned to see Father Willibald holding a spear. I laughed at his disobedience.

Laughter in battle. That was what Ragnar had taught me, to take joy from the fight. Joy in the morning, for the sun was touching the east now, filling the sky with light, driving darkness beyond the world's western rim, and I hammered Wasp-Sting against my shield, making a noise to drown the shouts of the Danes, and I knew we would be hard hit and that we must hold until Odda came, but I was relying on Leofric to be the bastion Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom on our right flank where the Danes were sure to try to lap around us by going through the marsh. Our left was safe, for that was by the ships, and the right was where we would be broken if we could not hold.

"Shields!" I bellowed, and we touched shields again for the Danes were coming and I knew they would not hesitate in their attack. We were too few to frighten them, they would not need to work up courage for this battle, they would just come.

And come they did. A thick line of men, shield to shield, new morning light touching ax heads and spear heads and swords.

The spears and throwing axes came first, but in the front rank we crouched behind shields and the second rank held their shields above ours and the missiles thumped home, banging hard, but doing no injury, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom and then I heard the wild war shout of the Danes, felt a last flutter of fear, and then they were there.

The thunder of shield hitting shield, my shield knocked back against my chest, shouts of rage, a spear between my ankles, Wasp-Sting lunging forward and blocked by a shield, a scream to my left, an ax flailing overhead. I ducked, lunged again, hit shield again, pushed back with my own shield, twisted the saxe free, stamped on the spear, stabbed Wasp-Sting over my shield into a bearded face and he twisted away, blood filling his mouth from his torn cheek. I took a half pace forward, stabbed again, and a sword glanced off my helmet and thumped my shoulder. A man pulled me hard backward because I was ahead of our line and the Danes were shouting, pushing, stabbing, and the first shield wall to break Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom would be the shield wall to die. I knew Leofric was hard-pressed on the right, but I had no time to look or help because the man with the torn cheek was thrashing at my shield with a short ax, trying to splinter it. I lowered the shield suddenly, spoiling his stroke, and slashed Wasp-Sting at his face a second time. She grated on skull bone, drew blood, and I hammered his shield with my own. He staggered back, but was pushed forward by the men behind him. This time Wasp-Sting took his throat and he was bubbling blood and air from a slit gullet. He fell to his knees, and the man behind him slammed a spear forward that broke through my shield, but stuck there, and the Danes were still heaving, but their own dying man obstructed them and the spearman tripped on him. The man to my right chopped his shield edge onto his head and I kicked him Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom in the face, then slashed Wasp-Sting down.

A Dane pulled the spear from my shield, stabbed with it, and was cut down by the man on my left. More Danes came and we were stepping back, bending back, because there were Danes in the marshland who were turning our right flank, but Leofric brought the men steadily around till our backs were to the burning ships. I could feel the heat of their burning and I thought we must die here. We would die with swords in our hands and flames at our backs and I hacked frantically at a red-bearded Dane, trying to shatter his shield. Ida, the man to my right, was on the ground, guts spilling through torn leather, and a Dane came at me from that side and I flicked Wasp-Sting at his face, ducked, took his ax blow on my breaking shield, shouted at the men behind to fill the gap, and stabbed Wasp-Sting at Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom the axman's feet, slicing into an ankle. A spear took him in the side of the head and I gave a great shout and heaved at the oncoming Danes, but there was no space to fight, no space to see, just a grunting mass of men hacking and stabbing and dying and bleeding, and then Odda came.

The ealdorman had waited till the Danes were crowded on the riverbank, waited till they were pushing one another in their eagerness to reach and to kill us, and then he launched his men across Cynuit's brow and they came like thunder with swords and axes and sickles and spears. The Danes saw them and there were shouts of warning and almost immediately I felt the pressure lessen to my front as the rearward Danes turned to meet the new threat. I rammed Wasp-Sting out to pierce a man's shoulder, and she went deep in, grating against bone, but the Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom man twisted away, snatching the blade out of my hand, so I drew Serpent-Breath and shouted at my men to kill the bastards. This was our day, I shouted, and Odin was giving us victory.

Forward now. Forward to battle slaughter.

Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one, and that day, beside the river where the blood flowed into the rising tide, and beside the burning boats, I let SerpentBreath sing her song of death. I remember little except a rage, an exultation, a massacre. This was the moment the skalds Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom celebrate, the heart of the battle that leads to victory, and the courage had gone from those Danes in a heartbeat. They had thought they were winning, thought they had trapped us by the burning ships, and thought to send our miserable souls to the afterworld, and instead the fyrd of Defnascir came on them like a storm.

"Forward!" I shouted.

"Wessex!" Leofric bellowed. "Wessex!" He was hacking with his ax, chopping men to the ground, leading theHeahengel 's crew away from the fiery ships.

The Danes were going backward, trying to escape us, and we could choose our victims;

Serpent-Breath was lethal that day. Hammer a shield forward, strike a man off balance, thrust the blade forward, push him down, stab into the throat, find the next man. I Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom pushed a Dane into the smoldering remnants of a campfire, killed him while he screamed, and some Danes were now fleeing to their unburned ships, pushing them into the flooding tide, but Ubba was still fighting. Ubba was shouting at his men to form a new shield wall, to protect the boats, and such was Ubba's hard will, such his searing anger, that the new shield wall held. We hit it hard, hammered it with sword and ax and spear, but again there was no space, just the heaving, grunting, breathstinking struggle, only this time it was the Danes who stepped back, pace by pace, as Odda's men joined mine to wrap around the Danes and hammer them with iron.

But Ubba was holding. Holding his rearguard firm, holding them under the raven banner. In every moment that he held us off another ship was pushed away from Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom the river's bank. All he wanted to achieve now was to save men and ships, to let a part of his army escape, to let them get away from this press of shield and blade. Six Danish ships were already rowing out to the Sæfern sea, and more were filling with men.

I screamed at my troops to break through, to kill them, but there was no space to kill, only blood-slicked ground and blades stabbing under shields, and men heaving at the opposing wall, and the wounded crawling away from the back of our line.

And then, with a roar of fury, Ubba hacked into our line with his great war ax. I remembered how he had done that in the fight beside the Gewæsc, how he had seemed to disappear into the ranks of the enemy only to kill them, and his huge blade was whirling again, making space, and our line went back and the Danes followed Ubba Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom who seemed determined to win this battle on his own and to make a name that would never be forgotten among the annals of the Northmen. The battle madness was on him, the runesticks were forgotten, and Ubba Lothbrokson was making his legend. Another man went down, crushed by the ax, and Ubba bellowed defiance, the Danes stepped forward behind him, and now Ubba threatened to pierce our line clean through. I shoved backward, going through my men, and went to where Ubba fought. There I shouted his name, called him the son of a goat, a turd of men, and he turned, eyes wild, and saw me.

"You bastard whelp," he snarled, and the men in front of me ducked aside as he came forward, mail coat drenched in blood, a part of his shield missing, his helmet dented and his ax blade red.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "Yesterday," I said, "I saw a raven fall."

"You bastard liar," he said, and the ax came around and I caught it on the shield and it was like being struck by a charging bull. He wrenched the ax free and a great sliver of wood was torn away to let the new daylight through the broken shield.

"A raven," I said, "fell from a clear sky."

"You whore's pup," he said and the ax came again, and again the shield took it and I staggered back, the rent in the shield widening.

"It called your name as it fell," I said.

"English filth," he shouted and swung a third time, but this time I stepped back and flicked Serpent-Breath out in an attempt to cut off his ax hand, but he was fast, snake fast, and he pulled back just in time.

"Ravn told me I would kill you," I said. "He Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom foretold it. In a dream by Odin's pit, among the blood, he saw the raven banner fall."

"Liar!" he screamed and came at me, trying to throw me down with weight and brute force. I met him, shield boss to shield boss, and I held him, swinging Serpent-Breath at his head. But the blow glanced off his helmet and I leaped back a heartbeat before the ax swung where my legs had been, lunged forward, and took him clean on the chest with Serpent-Breath's point. But I did not have any force in the blow and his mail took the lunge and stopped it, and he swung the ax up, trying to gut me from crotch to chest, but my ragged shield stopped his blow, and we both stepped back.

"Three brothers," I said, "and you alone of them live. Give my regards to Ivar and to Halfdan. Say that Uhtred Ragnarson sent you Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom to join them."

"Bastard," he said, and he stepped forward, swinging the ax in a massive sideways blow that was intended to crush my chest, but the battle calm had come on me, and the fear had flown and the joy was there and I rammed the shield sideways to take his ax strike, felt the heavy blade plunge into what was left of the wood, and I let go of the shield's handle so that the half-broken tangle of metal and wood dangled from his blade, and then I struck at him. Once, twice, both of them huge blows using both hands on Serpent-Breath's hilt and using all the strength I had taken from the long days atHeahengel 's oar. I drove him back, cracked his shield, and he lifted his ax, my shield still cumbering it, and then slipped. He had stepped on the spilled guts of a corpse, and his left food slid sideways. While he was Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom unbalanced, I stabbed Serpent-Breath forward and the blade pierced the mail above the hollow of his elbow and his ax arm dropped, all strength stolen from it.

Serpent-Breath flicked back to slash across his mouth, and I was shouting. There was blood in his beard and he knew then, knew he would die, knew he would see his brothers in the corpse hall. He did not give up. He saw death coming and fought it by trying to hammer me with his shield again, but I was too quick, too exultant, and the next stroke was in his neck and he staggered, blood pouring onto his shoulder, more blood trickling between the links of his chain mail, and he looked at me as he tried to stay upright.

"Wait for me in Valhalla, lord," I said.

He dropped to his knees, still staring at me.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom He tried to speak, but nothing came and I gave him the killing stroke.

"Now finish them!" Ealdorman Odda shouted, and the men who had been watching the duel screamed in triumph and rushed at the enemy and there was panic now as the Danes tried to reach their boats.

Some were throwing down weapons and the cleverest were lying flat, pretending to be dead, and men with sickles were killing men with swords. The women from Cynuit's summit were in the Danish camp now, killing and plundering.

I knelt by Ubba and closed his nerveless right fist about the handle of his war ax. "Go to Valhalla, lord," I said. He was not dead yet, but he was dying for my last stroke had pierced deep into his neck, and then he gave a great shudder and there was a Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom croaking noise in his throat and I kept on holding his hand tight to the ax as he died.

A dozen more boats escaped, all crowded with Danes, but the rest of Ubba's fleet was ours, and while a handful of the enemy fled into the woods where they were hunted down, the remaining Danes were either dead or prisoners, and the Raven banner fell into Odda's hands, and we had the victory that day, and Willibald, spear point reddened, was dancing with delight.

We took horses, gold, silver, prisoners, women, ships, weapons, and mail. I had fought in the shield wall.

Ealdorman Odda had been wounded, struck on the head by an ax that had pierced his helmet and driven into his skull. He lived, but his eyes were white, his skin pale, his breath shallow, and his head matted with Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom blood. Priests prayed over him in one of the small village houses and I saw him there, but he could not see me, could not speak, perhaps could not hear, but I shoved two of the priests aside, knelt by his bed, and thanked him for taking the fight to the Danes. His son, unwounded, his armor apparently unscratched in the battle, watched me from the darkness of the room's far corner.

I straightened from his father's low bed. My back ached and my arms were burning with weariness. "I am going to Cridianton," I told young Odda.

He shrugged as if he did not care where I went. I ducked under the low door where Leofric waited for me. "Don't go to Cridianton," he told me.

"My wife is there," I said. "My child is Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom there."

"Alfred is at Exanceaster," he said.

"So?"

"So the man who takes news of this battle to Exanceaster gets the credit for it," he said.

"Then you go," I said.

The Danish prisoners wanted to bury Ubba, but Odda the Younger had ordered the body to be dismembered and its pieces given to the beasts and birds. That had not been done yet, though the great battle-ax that I had put in Ubba's dying hand was gone, and I regretted that, for I had wanted it, but I wanted Ubba treated decently as well and so I let the prisoners dig their grave.

Odda the Younger did not confront me, but let the Danes bury their leader and make a mound over his corpse and thus send Ubba to his brothers in the corpse hall.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom And when it was done I rode south with a score of my men, all of us mounted on horses we had taken from the Danes.

I went to my family.

These days, so long after that battle at Cynuit, I employ a harpist. He is an old Welshman, blind, but very skillful, and he often sings tales of his ancestors. He likes to sing of Arthur and Guinevere, of how Arthur slaughtered the English, but he takes care not to let me hear those songs, instead praising me and my battles with outrageous flattery by singing the words of my poets who describe me as Uhtred Strong-Sword or Uhtred Death-Giver or Uhtred the Beneficent. I sometimes see the old blind man smiling to himself as his hands pluck the strings and I have more sympathy with his skepticism than I do with the poets who Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom are a pack of sniveling sycophants.

But in the year 877 I employed no poets and had no harpist. I was a young man who had come dazed and dazzled from the shield wall, and who stank of blood as I rode south. Yet, for some reason, as we threaded the hills and woods of Defnascir, I thought of a harp.

Every lord has a harp in the hall. As a child, before I went to Ragnar, I would sometimes sit by the harp in Bebbanburg's hall and I was intrigued by how the strings would play themselves. Pluck one string and the others would shiver to give off a tiny music.

"Wasting your time, boy?" my father had snarled as I crouched by the harp one day, and I suppose I had been wasting it, but on that spring day in 877 I remembered my childhood's harp and how its strings would Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom quiver if just one was touched. It was not music, of course, just noise, and scarcely audible noise at that, but after the battle in Pedredan's valley it seemed to me that my life was made of strings and if I touched one then the others, though separate, would make their sound. I thought of Ragnar the Younger and wondered if he lived, and whether his father's killer, Kjartan, still lived, and how he would die if he did, and thinking of Ragnar made me remember Brida, and her memory slid on to an image of Mildrith, and that brought to mind Alfred and his bitter wife, Ælswith, and all those separate people were a part of my life, strings strung on the frame of Uhtred, and though they were separate they affected one another and together they would make the music of my life.

Daft thoughts, I told myself. Life is just life.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom We live, we die, we go to the corpse hall.

There is no music, just chance. Fate is relentless.

"What are you thinking?" Leofric asked me.

We were riding through a valley that was pink with flowers.

"I thought you were going to Exanceaster,"

I said.

"I am, but I'm going to Cridianton first, then taking you on to Exanceaster. So what are you thinking? You look gloomy as a priest."

"I'm thinking about a harp."

"A harp!" He laughed. "Your head's full of rubbish."

"Touch a harp," I said, "and it just makes noise, but play it and it makes music."

"Sweet Christ!" He looked at me with a Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom worried expression. "You're as bad as Alfred. You think too much."

He was right. Alfred was obsessed by order, obsessed by the task of marshaling life's chaos into something that could be controlled. He would do it by the church and by the law, which are much the same thing, but I wanted to see a pattern in the strands of life. In the end I found one, and it had nothing to do with any god, but with people.

With the people we love. My harpist is right to smile when he chants that I am Uhtred the Gift-Giver or Uhtred the Avenger or Uhtred the Widow-Maker, for he is old and he has learned what I have learned, that I am really Uhtred the Lonely. We are all lonely and all seek a hand to hold in the darkness. It is not the harp, but the hand that plays it.

"It will give you a headache," Leofric said, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom "thinking too much."

"Earsling," I said to him.

Mildrith was well. She was safe. She had not been raped. She wept when she saw me, and I took her in my arms and wondered that I was so fond of her, and she said she had thought I was dead and told me she had prayed to her god to spare me, and she took me to the room where our son was in his swaddling clothes and, for the first time, I looked at Uhtred, son of Uhtred, and I prayed that one day he would be the lawful and sole owner of lands that are carefully marked by stones and by dykes, by oaks and by ash, by marsh and by sea. I am still the owner of those lands that were purchased with our family's blood, and I will take those lands back from the man who stole them from me and I will give them to my sons. For Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom I am Uhtred, Earl Uhtred, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, and destiny is everything.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom

But the tale begins with Alfred, who was, indeed, a very pious man and frequently sick. A recent theory suggests that he suffered from Crohn's disease, which causes acute abdominal pains, and from chronic piles, details we can glean from a book written by a man who knew him very well, Bishop Asser, who came into Alfred's life after the events described in this novel.

Currently there is a debate whether Bishop Asser did write that life, or whether it was forged a hundred years after Alfred's death, and I am utterly unqualified to judge the arguments of the contending academics, but even if it is a forgery, it contains much that has the smack of truth, suggesting that whoever wrote it knew a great deal about Alfred. The author, to be sure, wanted to present Alfred in a glowing light, as warrior, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom scholar, and Christian, but he does not shy away from his hero's youthful sins. Alfred, he tells us, "was unable to abstain from carnal desire" until God generously made him sick enough to resist temptation. Whether Alfred did have an illegitimate son, Osferth, is debatable, but it seems very possible.

The biggest challenge Alfred faced was an invasion of England by the Danes. Some readers may be disappointed that those Danes are called Northmen or pagans in the novel, but are rarely described as Vikings. In this I follow the early English writers who suffered from the Danes, and who rarely used the wordViking, which, anyway, describes an activity rather than a people or a tribe. To go viking meant to go raiding, and the Danes who fought against England in the ninth century, though undoubtedly raiders, were preeminently invaders and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom occupiers. Much fanciful imagery has been attached to them, chief of which are the horned helmet, the berserker, and the ghastly execution called the spread-eagle, by which a victim's ribs were splayed apart to expose the lungs and heart. That seems to have been a later invention, as does the existence of the berserker, the crazed naked warrior who attacked in a mad frenzy.

Doubtless there were insanely frenzied warriors, but there is no evidence that lunatic nudists made regular appearances on the battlefield. The same is true of the horned helmet for which there is not a scrap of contemporary evidence. Viking warriors were much too sensible to place a pair of protuberances on their helmets so ideally positioned as to enable an enemy to knock the helmet off. It is a pity to abandon the iconic horned helmets, but alas, they did not Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom exist.

The assault on the church by the Danes is well recorded. The invaders were not Christians and saw no reason to spare churches, monasteries, and nunneries from their attacks, especially as those places often contained considerable treasures. Whether the concerted attack on the northern monastic houses happened is debatable.

The source is extremely late, a thirteenthcentury chronicle written by Roger of Wendover, but what is certain is that many bishoprics and monasteries did disappear during the Danish assault, and that assault was not a great raid, but a deliberate attempt to eradicate English society and replace it with a Danish state.

Ivar the Boneless, Ubba, Halfdan,

Guthrum, the various kings, Alfred's nephew Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Æthelwold, Ealdorman Odda, and the ealdormen whose names begin with Æ (a vanished letter, called the ash) all existed.

Alfred should properly be spelled Ælfred, but I preferred the usage by which he is known today. It is not certain how King Edmund of East Anglia died, though he was certainly killed by the Danes and in one ancient version the future saint was indeed riddled with arrows like Saint Sebastian. Ragnar and Uhtred are fictional, though a family with Uhtred's name did hold Bebbanburg (now Bamburgh Castle) later in the Anglo-Saxon period, and as that family are my ancestors, I decided to give them that magical place a little earlier than the records suggest. Most of the major events happened; the assault on York, the siege of Nottingham, the attacks on the four kingdoms, all are recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or in Asser's life of Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom King Alfred, which together are the major sources for the period.

I used both those sources and also consulted a host of secondary works. Alfred's life is remarkably well documented for the period, some of that documentation written by Alfred himself, but even so, as Professor James Campbell wrote in an essay on the king, "Arrows of insight have to be winged by the feathers of speculation." I have feathered lavishly, as historical novelists must, yet as much of the novel as possible is based on real events. Guthrum's occupation of Wareham, the exchange of hostages and his breaking of the truce, his murder of the hostages and occupation of Exeter all happened, as did the loss of most of his fleet in a great storm off Durlston Head near Swanage. The one large change I have made was to bring Ubba's death forward by Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom a year, so that, in the next book, Uhtred can be elsewhere, and, persuaded by the arguments in John Peddie's book,Alfred, Warrior King, I placed that action at Cannington in Somerset rather than at the more traditional site of Countisbury Head in north Devon.

Alfred was the king who preserved the idea of England, which his son, daughter, and grandson made explicit. At a time of great danger, when the English kingdoms were perilously near to extinction, he provided a bulwark that allowed the Anglo-Saxon culture to survive. His achievements were greater than that, but his story is far from over, so Uhtred will campaign again.

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