The Last Kingdom Series

Copyright

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2020

Map © John Gilkes 2020

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photography © CollaborationJS/Arcangel Images

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

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

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

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Source ISBN: 9780008183950

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2020 ISBN: 9780008183974

Version: 2020-09-15

Dedication

War Lord

is for Alexander Dreymon

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Place Names

Map

Part One: The Broken Oath

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part Two: The Devil’s Work

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part Three: The Slaughter

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Historical Note

Author Note

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Bernard Cornwell

The SHARPE series

About the Publisher

PLACE NAMES

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

Map

PART ONE

The Broken Oath

One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It’s fate,’ Finan answered, ‘and fate is a bitch.’ We lay in the long grass watching the dust kicked up from the road by the scout’s stallion. ‘He should have ridden along the road’s edge,’ Finan said, ‘no dust there.’

The scout, who I recognised now as Oswi, swerved off the road and began the long climb to the hilltop where we lay.

‘You’re sure about the dragon?’ I asked.

‘Can’t miss a big beast like that,’ Finan said, ‘the creature came from the north, so it did.’

‘And the star fell from north to south,’ my son said, reaching under his chest to touch his cross. My son is a Christian.

The dust in the valley died away. The enemy was coming, except I was not sure who my enemy was, only that this day I must fight the king coming from the south. And that felt all wrong, because the star and the dragon had said that evil would come from the north.

We look for omens. Even Christians search the world for such signs. We watch the flight of birds, fear the fall of a branch, look for the wind’s pattern on water, draw breath at a vixen’s cry, and touch our amulets when a harp string snaps, but omens are hard to read unless the gods decide to make their message plain. And three nights before, in Bebbanburg, the gods had sent a message that could not have been clearer.

That evil would come from the north.

The dragon had flown in the night sky above Bebbanburg. I did not see it, but Finan did and I trust Finan. It was vast, he said, with a skin like hammered silver, eyes like burning coals, and with wings wide enough to hide the stars. Each beat of those monstrous wings made the sea shiver like a burst of wind on a calm day. It had turned its head towards Bebbanburg, and Finan thought fire was about to be spewed across the whole fortress, but then the great slow wings beat once more, the sea shuddered far beneath, and the dragon flew on southwards.

‘And a star fell last night,’ Father Cuthbert said, ‘Mehrasa saw it.’ Father Cuthbert, Bebbanburg’s priest, was blind and married to Mehrasa, an exotic dark-skinned girl we had rescued from a slave-trader in Lundene many years before. I call her a girl out of habit, but of course she was middle-aged now. We grow old, I thought.

‘The star fell from the north towards the south,’ Father Cuthbert said.

‘And the dragon came from the north,’ Finan added.

I said nothing. Benedetta leaned on my shoulder. She too said nothing, but her hand tightened on mine.

‘Signs and wonders,’ Father Cuthbert said, ‘something dire will happen.’ He crossed himself.

It was an early summer evening. We were sitting outside Bebbanburg’s hall where swallows flew around the eaves and where the long waves rolled incessantly against the beach beneath the eastern ramparts. The waves give us rhythm, I thought, an endless sound that rises and falls. I had been born to that sound and soon I must die. I touched my hammer amulet and prayed that I would die to the sound of Bebbanburg’s waves and to the cry of her gulls.

‘Something dire,’ Father Cuthbert repeated, ‘and it will come from the north.’

Or maybe the dragon and the falling star were omens of my death? I touched the hammer again. I can still ride a horse, heft a shield, and wield a sword, but at day’s end the aches in my joints tell me I am old. ‘The worst thing about death,’ I broke my silence, ‘is not knowing what happens next.’

No one spoke for a while, then Benedetta squeezed my hand again. ‘You are a fool,’ she said fondly.

‘Always has been,’ Finan put in.

‘You can watch what happens from Valhalla perhaps?’ Father Cuthbert suggested. As a Christian priest he was not supposed to believe in Valhalla, but he had long learned to indulge me. He smiled. ‘Or join the church of Rome, lord?’ he said mischievously. ‘I assure you that from heaven you can watch earth!’

‘In all your efforts to convert me,’ I said, ‘I never heard you say there was ale in heaven.’

‘I forgot to mention that?’ he asked, still smiling.

‘There will be wine in heaven,’ Benedetta said, ‘good wine from Italy.’

That provoked silence. None of us much liked wine. ‘I hear King Hywel has gone to Italy,’ my son said after the pause, ‘or perhaps he’s just thinking of going?’

‘To Rome?’ Finan asked.

‘So they say.’

‘I would like to go to Rome,’ Father Cuthbert said wistfully.

‘There is nothing in Rome,’ Benedetta said scornfully. ‘It is ruins and rats.’

‘And the Holy Father,’ Cuthbert said gently.

Again no one spoke. Hywel, whom I liked, was King of Dyfed and if he thought it was safe to travel to Rome then there had to be peace between his Welshmen and the Saxons of Mercia, so no trouble there. But the dragon had not come from the south, nor from the west, it had come from the north. ‘The Scots,’ I said.

‘Too busy fighting the Norsemen,’ Finan said brusquely.

‘And raiding Cumbria,’ my son said bitterly.

‘And Constantine is old,’ Father Cuthbert added.

‘We’re all old,’ I said.

‘And Constantine would rather build monasteries than make war,’ Cuthbert went on.

I doubted that was true. Constantine was King of Scotland. I enjoyed meeting him, he was a wise and elegant man, but I did not trust him. No Northumbrian trusts the Scots, just as no Scot trusts the Northumbrians. ‘It will never end,’ I said wanly.

‘What?’ Benedetta asked.

‘War. Trouble.’

‘When we are all Christians …’ Father Cuthbert began.

‘Ha!’ I said curtly.

‘But the dragon and the star do not lie,’ he went on. ‘The trouble will come from the north. The prophet has told us so in the scriptures! “Quia malum ego adduco ab aquilone et contritionem magnam.”’ He paused, hoping one of us would ask him to translate.

‘I will bring evil from the north,’ Benedetta disappointed him, ‘and much destroying.’

‘Much destruction!’ Father Cuthbert said ominously. ‘Evil will come from the north! It is written!’

And next morning the evil came.

From the south.

The ship came from the south. There was hardly a breath of wind, the sea was lazy, its small waves collapsing exhausted on Bebbanburg’s long beach. The approaching ship, its prow crested with a cross, left a widening ripple that was touched with glittering gold by the early morning sun. She was being rowed, her oars rising and falling in a slow, weary rhythm. ‘Poor bastards must have been rowing all night,’ Berg said. He commanded the morning’s guards posted on Bebbanburg’s ramparts.

‘Forty oars,’ I said, more to make conversation than to tell Berg what he could plainly see for himself.

‘And coming here.’

‘From where, though?’

Berg shrugged. ‘What’s happening today?’ he asked.

It was my turn to shrug. What would happen was what always happened. Cauldrons would be lit to boil clothes clean, salt would evaporate in the pans north of the fortress, men would practise with shields, swords and spears, horses exercised, fish would be smoked, water drawn from the deep wells, and ale brewed in the fortress kitchens. ‘I plan to do nothing,’ I said, ‘but you can take two men and remind Olaf Einerson that he owes me rent. A lot of rent.’

‘His wife’s ill, lord.’

‘He said that last winter.’

‘And he lost half his flock to Scotsmen.’

‘More likely he sold them,’ I said sourly. ‘No one else has complained of Scottish raiders this spring.’ Olaf Einerson had inherited his tenancy from his father, who had never failed to deliver fleeces or silver as rent. Olaf, the son, was a big and capable man whose ambitions, it seemed to me, went beyond raising hardy sheep on the high hills. ‘On second thoughts,’ I said, ‘take fifteen men and scare the shit out of the bastard. I don’t trust him.’

The ship was close enough now that I could see three men sitting just forward of the stern platform. One was a priest, or at least he was wearing a long black robe and it was he who stood and waved up at our ramparts. I did not wave back. ‘Whoever they are,’ I told Berg, ‘bring them to the hall. They can watch me drink ale. And wait before you smack some sense into Olaf.’

‘Wait, lord?’

‘Let’s see what news they’re bringing first,’ I said, nodding at the ship that was now turning towards the narrow entrance of Bebbanburg’s harbour. The ship carried no cargo that I could see, and her oarsmen looked bone weary, suggesting that she brought urgent news. ‘She’s from Æthelstan,’ I guessed.

‘Æthelstan?’ Berg asked.

‘She’s not a Northumbrian ship, is she?’ I asked. Northumbrian ships had narrower prows, while southern shipwrights preferred a broad bow. Besides, this ship displayed the cross which few Northumbrian ships carried. ‘And who uses priests to carry messages?’

‘King Æthelstan.’

I watched the ship turn into the entrance channel, then led Berg off the ramparts. ‘Look after his oarsmen. Send them food and ale, and bring the damn priest to the hall.’

I climbed to the hall where two servants were attacking cobwebs with long willow switches tied with bundles of feathers. Benedetta was watching to make sure every last spider was driven from the fortress. ‘We have visitors,’ I told her, ‘so your war against spiders must wait.’

‘I am not at war,’ she insisted, ‘I like spiders. But not in my home. Who are the visitors?’

‘I’m guessing they’re messengers from Æthelstan.’

‘Then we must greet them properly!’ She clapped her hands and ordered benches to be brought. ‘And bring the throne from the platform,’ she commanded.

‘It’s not a throne,’ I said, ‘just a fancy bench.’

‘Ouff!’ she said. It was a noise Benedetta made whenever I exasperated her. It made me smile, which only irritated her more. ‘It is a throne,’ she insisted, ‘and you are King of Bebbanburg.’

‘Lord,’ I corrected her.

‘You are as much a king as that fool Guthfrith,’ she made the sign to ward off evil, ‘or Owain, or anyone else.’ It was an old argument and I let it drop.

‘And have the girls bring ale,’ I said, ‘and some food. Preferably not stale.’

‘And you should wear the dark robe. I fetch it.’

Benedetta was from Italy, snatched as a child from her home by slavers, then traded across Christendom until she reached Wessex. I had freed her and now she was the Lady of Bebbanburg, though not my wife. ‘My grandmother,’ she had told me more than once, and always making the sign of the cross as she spoke, ‘told me I should never marry. I would be cursed! I have been cursed enough in life. Now I am happy! Why should I risk a grandmother’s curse? My grandmother was never wrong!’

I grumpily allowed her to drape the costly black robe over my shoulders, refused to wear the bronze-gilt circlet that had belonged to my father, and then, with Benedetta beside me, I waited for the priest.

And it was an old friend who came from the sunlight into the dusty shadows of Bebbanburg’s great hall. It was Father Oda, now Bishop of Rammesburi, who walked tall and elegant, his long black robe hemmed with dark red cloth. He was escorted by a pair of West Saxon warriors who politely gave my steward their swords before following Oda towards me. ‘Anyone would think,’ the bishop said as he came closer, ‘that you were a king!’

‘He is,’ Benedetta insisted.

‘And anyone would think,’ I said, ‘that you were a bishop.’

He smiled. ‘By the grace of God, Lord Uhtred, I am.’

‘By the grace of Æthelstan,’ I said, then stood and greeted him with an embrace. ‘Do I congratulate you?’

‘If you like. I think I am the first Dane to be a bishop in Englaland.’

‘Is that what you call it now?’

‘It’s easier than saying I am the first Danish bishop in Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia.’ He bowed to Benedetta. ‘It is good to see you again, my lady.’

‘And to see you, my lord bishop,’ she said, offering him a curtsey.

‘Ah! So rumour is wrong! Courtesy does live in Bebbanburg!’ He grinned at me, pleased with his jest and I smiled back. Oda, Bishop of Rammesburi! The only surprising thing about that appointment was that Oda was a Dane, son of pagan immigrants who had invaded East Anglia in the service of Ubba, whom I had killed. And now the Danish son of pagan parents was a bishop in Saxon Englaland! Not that he did not deserve it. Oda was a subtle, clever man who, as far as I knew, was as honest as the day is long.

There was a pause because Finan had seen Oda arrive and now came to greet him. Oda had been with us when we defended Lundene’s Crepelgate, a fight that had put Æthelstan on the throne. I might be no Christian and no lover of Christianity, but it is hard to dislike a man who has shared a desperate battle at your side. ‘Ah, wine,’ Oda greeted a servant, then turned to Benedetta, ‘no doubt blessed by the Italian sun?’

‘More likely pissed on by Frankish peasants,’ I said.