The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings

And we swept down the black river.

No one spoke much. Every man in both boats knew the danger we faced. I edged my way forward between the crouching figures, and Father Pyrlig must have sensed my approach or else a gleam of light reflected from the wolf’s head that served as the silver crest of my helmet because he greeted me before I saw him. ‘Here, lord,’ he said.

He was sitting on the end of a rower’s bench and I stood beside him, my boots splashing in the bilge water. ‘Have you prayed?’ I asked him.

‘I haven’t stopped praying,’ he said seriously. ‘I sometimes think God must be tired of my voice. And Brother Osferth here is praying.’

‘I’m not a brother,’ Osferth said sullenly.

‘But your prayers might work better if God thinks you are,’ Pyrlig said.

Alfred’s bastard son was crouching by Father Pyrlig. Finan had equipped Osferth with a mail coat that had been mended after some Dane had been belly-gutted by a Saxon spear. He also had a helmet, tall boots, leather gloves, a round shield and both a long-and a short-sword, so that at least he looked like a warrior. ‘I’m supposed to send you back to Wintanceaster,’ I told him.

‘I know.’

‘Lord,’ Pyrlig reminded Osferth.

‘Lord,’ Osferth said, though reluctantly.

‘I don’t want to send the king your corpse,’ I said, ‘so stay close to Father Pyrlig.’

‘Very close, boy,’ Pyrlig said, ‘pretend you love me.’

‘Stay behind him,’ I ordered Osferth.

‘Forget about being my lover,’ Pyrlig said hurriedly, ‘pretend you’re my dog instead.’

‘And say your prayers,’ I finished. There was no other useful advice I could give Osferth, unless it was to strip off his clothes, swim ashore and go back to his monastery. I had as much faith in his fighting skills as Finan, which meant I had none. Osferth was sour, inept and clumsy. If it had not been for his dead uncle, Leofric, I would have happily sent him back to Wintanceaster, but Leofric had taken me as a young raw boy and had turned me into a sword warrior and so I would endure Osferth for Leofric’s sake.

We were abreast of the new town now. I could smell the charcoal fires of the smithies, and see the reflected glow of fires flickering deep in alleyways. I looked ahead to where the bridge spanned the river, but all was black there.

‘I need to see the gap,’ Ralla called from the steering platform.

I worked my way aft again, stepping blindly between the crouching men.

‘If I can’t see it,’ Ralla heard me coming, ‘then I can’t try it.’

‘How close are we?’

‘Too close.’ There was panic in his voice.

I clambered up beside him. I could see the old city now, the city on the hills surrounded by its Roman wall. I could see it because the fires in the city made a dull glow and Ralla was right. We were close.

‘We have to make a decision,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to land upriver of the bridge.’

‘They’ll see us if we land there,’ I said. The Danes would be certain to have men guarding the river wall upstream of the bridge.

‘So you either die there with a sword in your hand,’ Ralla said brutally, ‘or you drown.’

I stared ahead and saw nothing. ‘Then I choose the sword,’ I said dully, seeing the death of my desperate idea.

Ralla took a deep breath to shout at the oarsmen, but the shout never came because, quite suddenly and far ahead, out where the Temes spread and emptied into the sea, a scrap of yellow showed. Not bright yellow, not a wasp’s yellow, but a sour, leprous, dark yellow that leaked through a rent in the clouds. It was dawn beyond the sea, a dark dawn, a reluctant dawn, but it was light, and Ralla neither shouted nor turned the steering-oar to take us into the bank. Instead he touched the amulet at his neck and kept the boat on its headlong course. ‘Crouch down, lord,’ he said, ‘and hold hard to something.’

The boat was quivering like a horse before battle. We were helpless now, caught in the river’s grip. The water was sweeping down from far inland, fed by spring rains and subsiding floods, and where it met the bridge it piled itself in great white ragged heaps. It seethed, roared and foamed between the stone pilings, but in the bridge’s centre, where the gap was, it poured in a sheeting, gleaming stream that fell a man’s height to the new water level beyond where the river swirled and grumbled before becoming calm again. I could hear the water fighting the bridge, hear the thunder of it loud as wind-driven breakers assaulting a beach.

And Ralla steered for the gap, which he could just see outlined against the dull yellow of the broken eastern sky. Behind us was blackness, though once I did see that sour morning light reflect from the water-glossed stem of Osric’s ship and I knew he was close behind us.

‘Hold hard!’ Ralla called to our crew, and the ship was hissing, still quivering, and she seemed to race faster, and I saw the bridge come towards us and it loomed black over us as I crouched beside the ship’s side and gripped the timber hard.

And then we were in the gap, and I had the sensation of falling as though we had tipped into an abyss between the worlds. The noise was deafening. It was the noise of water fighting stone, water tearing, water breaking, water pouring, a noise to fill the skies, a noise louder even than Thor’s thunder, and the ship gave a lurch and I thought she must have struck and would slew sideways and tip us to our deaths, but somehow she straightened and flew on. There was blackness above, the blackness of the stub ends of the bridge’s broken timbers, and then the noise doubled and spray flew across the deck and we were slamming downwards, ship tipping, and there was a crack like the gates of Odin’s hall banging shut and I was spilled forward as water cascaded over us. We had struck stone, I thought, and I waited to drown and I even remembered to grip Serpent-Breath’s hilt so I would die with my sword in my hand, but the ship staggered up and I understood the crash had been the bows striking the river beyond the bridge and that we were alive.

‘Row!’ Ralla shouted. ‘Oh you lucky bastards, row!’

Water was deep in the bilge, but we were afloat, and the eastern sky was ragged with rents and in their shadowy light we could see the city, and see the place where the wall was broken. ‘And the rest,’ Ralla said with pride in his voice, ‘is up to you, lord.’

‘It’s up to the gods,’ I said, and looked behind to see Osric’s boat fighting up from the maelstrom where the river fell. So both our ships had lived, and the current was sweeping us downstream of the place we wished to land, but the oarsmen turned us and fought against the water so that we came to the wharf from the east, and that was good, because anyone watching would assume we had rowed upriver from Beamfleot. They would think we were Danes who had come to reinforce the garrison that now readied itself for Æthelred’s assault.

There was a large sea-going ship moored in the dock where we wanted to land. I could see her clearly because torches blazed on the white wall of the mansion the dock served. The ship was a fine thing, her stem and stern rearing high and proud. There were no beast-heads on the ship, for no Northman would let his carved heads frighten the spirit of a friendly land. A lone man was on board the ship and he watched us approach. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted.

‘Ragnar Ragnarson!’ I called back. I heaved him a line woven from walrus hide. ‘Has the fighting started?’

‘Not yet, lord,’ he said. He took the line and twisted it around the other ship’s stem. ‘And when it does they’ll get slaughtered!’

‘We’re not too late, then?’ I said. I staggered as our ship struck the other, then stepped over the sheer-strakes onto one of the empty rowers’ benches. ‘Whose ship is this?’ I asked the man.

‘Sigefrid’s, lord. The Wave-Tamer.’

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said, then turned back. ‘Ashore!’ I shouted in English and watched as my men retrieved shields and weapons from the flooded bilge. Osric’s ship came in behind us, low in the water, and I realised she had been half swamped as she shot the bridge’s gap. Men began clambering onto the Wave-Tamer and the Northman who had taken my line saw the crosses hanging from their necks.

‘You …’ he began, and found he had nothing more to say. He half turned to run ashore, but I had blocked his escape. There was shock on his face, shock and puzzlement.

‘Put your hand on your sword hilt,’ I said, drawing Serpent-Breath.

‘Lord,’ he said, as if about to plead for his life, but then he understood his life was ending because I could not leave him alive. I could not let him go, because then he would warn Sigefrid of our arrival, and if I had tied his hands and feet and left him aboard the Wave-Tamer then some other person might have found and released him. He knew all that, and his face changed from puzzlement to defiance and, instead of just gripping his sword’s hilt, he began to pull the weapon free of its scabbard.

And died.

Serpent-Breath took him in the throat. Hard and fast. I felt her tip pierce muscle and tough tissue. Saw the blood. Saw his arm falter and the blade drop back into its scabbard, and I reached out with my left hand to grip his sword hand and hold it over his hilt. I made sure that he kept hold of his sword as he died, for then he would be taken to the feasting hall of the dead. I held his hand tight and let him collapse onto my chest where his blood ran down my mail. ‘Go to Odin’s hall,’ I told him softly, ‘and save a place for me.’

He could not speak. He choked as blood spilled down his windpipe.

‘My name is Uhtred,’ I said, ‘and one day I will feast with you in the corpse-hall and we shall laugh together and drink together and be friends.’

I let his body drop, then knelt and found his amulet, Thor’s hammer, which I cut from his neck with Serpent-Breath. I put the hammer in a pouch, cleaned my sword’s tip on the dead man’s cloak, then slid the blade back into her fleece-lined scabbard. I took my shield from Sihtric, my servant.

‘Let’s go ashore,’ I said, ‘and take a city.’

Because it was time to fight.