The Last Kingdom Series Books 1–8: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North, Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings, The Pagan Lord, The Empty Throne

‘We shall send men here,’ Alfred said, ‘and teach them not to steal apples.’

We stayed that night in a small village. The Danes had been there and the folk were frightened. At first, when we rode up the rutted track between the houses, they hid, thinking we were Danes, but when they heard our voices they crept out and stared at us as if we had just ridden down from the moon. Their priest was dead, killed by the pagans, so Alfred insisted that Adelbert hold a service in the burned-out remnants of the church. Alfred himself acted as precentor, accompanying his chanting with the priest’s small harp. ‘I learned to play as a child,’ he told me. ‘My stepmother insisted, but I’m not very good.’

‘You’re not,’ I agreed, which he did not like.

‘There is never enough time to practise,’ he complained.

We lodged in a peasant’s house. Alfred, reckoning that the Danes would have taken the harvest from wherever we visited, had laden the spare horses with smoked fish, smoked eels and oatcakes, so we provided most of the food and, after we had eaten, the peasant couple knelt to me and the woman tentatively touched the skirt of my mail coat. ‘My children,’ she whispered, ‘there are two of them. My daughter is about seven years old and my boy is a little older. They are good children.’

‘What of them?’ Alfred intervened.

‘The pagans took them, lord,’ the woman said. She was crying. ‘You can find them, lord,’ she said, tugging my mail, ‘you can find them and bring them back? My little ones? Please?’

I promised to try, but it was an empty promise for the children would have long gone to the slave market and, by now, would either be working on some Danish estate or, if they were pretty, sent overseas where heathen men pay good silver for Christian children.

We learned that the Danes had come to the village shortly after Twelfth Night. They had killed, captured, stolen and ridden on southwards. A few days later they had returned, going back northwards, driving a band of captives and a herd of captured horses laden with plunder. Since then the villagers had seen no Danes except for the few on the swamp’s edge. Those Danes, they said, caused no trouble, perhaps because they were so few and dared not stir up the enmity of the country about them. We heard the same tale in other villages. The Danes had come, they had pillaged, then had gone back north.

But on our third day we at last saw a force of the enemy riding on the Roman road which cuts straight eastwards across the hills from Baðum. There were close to sixty of them, and they rode hard in front of dark clouds and the gathering night. ‘Going back to Cippanhamm,’ Alfred said. It was a foraging party, and their packhorses carried nets stuffed with hay to feed their war horses, and I remembered my childhood winter in Readingum, when the Danes first invaded Wessex, and how hard it had been to keep horses and men alive in the cold. We had cut feeble winter grass and pulled down thatch to feed our horses, which still became skeletal and weak. I have often listened to men declare that all that is needed to win a war is to assemble men and march against the enemy, but it is never that easy. Men and horses must be fed, and hunger can defeat an army much faster than spears. We watched the Danes go north, then turned aside to a half-ruined barn that offered us shelter for the night.

It began to snow that night, a relentless soft snow, silent and thick, so that by dawn the world was white under a pale blue sky. I suggested we waited till the snow had thawed before we rode further, but Egwine, who came from this part of the country, said we were only two or three hours south of Cippanhamm and Alfred was impatient. ‘We go,’ he insisted. ‘We go there, look at the town and ride away.’

So we rode north, our hooves crunching the newly fallen snow, riding through a world made new and clean. Snow clung to every twig and branch while ice skimmed the ditches and ponds. I saw a fox’s trail crossing a field and thought that the spring would bring a plague of the beasts for there would have been no one to hunt them, and the lambs would die bloodily and the ewes would bleat pitifully.

We came in sight of Cippanhamm before midday, though the great pall of smoke, made by hundreds of cooking fires, had shown in the sky all morning. We stopped south of the town, just where the road emerged from a stand of oaks, and the Danes must have noticed us, but none came from the gates to see who we were. It was too cold for men to stir themselves. I could see guards on the walls, though none stayed there long, retreating to whatever warmth they could find between their short forays along the wooden ramparts. Those ramparts were bright with round shields painted blue and white and blood-red and, because Guthrum’s men were there, black. ‘We should count the shields,’ Alfred said.

‘It won’t help,’ I said. ‘They carry two or three shields each and hang them on the walls to make it look as if they have more men.’

Alfred was shivering and I insisted we find some shelter. We turned back into the trees, following a path which led to the river and a mile or so upstream we came across a mill. The millstone had been taken away, but the building itself was whole and it was well made, with stone walls and a turf roof held up by stout rafters. There was a hearth in a room where the miller’s family had lived, but I would not let Egwine light a fire in case the trickle of smoke brought curious Danes from the town. ‘Wait till dark,’ I said.

‘We’ll freeze by then,’ he grumbled.

‘Then you shouldn’t have come,’ I snapped.

‘We have to get closer to the town,’ Alfred said.

‘You don’t,’ I said, ‘I do.’ I had seen horses paddocked to the west of the walls and I reckoned I could take our best horse and ride about the town’s western edge and count every horse I saw. That would give a rough estimate of the Danish numbers, for almost every man would have a horse. Alfred wanted to come, but I shook my head. It was pointless for more than one man to go, and sensible that the one man who did go should speak Danish, so I told him I would see him back in the mill before nightfall and then I rode north. Cippanhamm was built on a hill that was almost encircled by the river, so I could not ride clear around the town, but I went as close to the walls as I dared and stared across the river and saw no horses on its farther bank which suggested that the Danes were keeping all of their beasts on the western side of the town. I went there, keeping in the snowy woods, and though the Danes must have seen me they could not be bothered to ride into the snow to chase one man, and so I was able to find the paddocks where their horses shivered. I spent the day counting. Most of the horses were in fields beside the royal compound and there were hundreds of them. By late afternoon I had estimated that there were twelve hundred, and those were only the ones I could see, and the best horses would be in the town, but my reckoning was good enough. It would give Alfred an idea of how large Guthrum’s force was. Say two thousand men? And elsewhere in Wessex, in the towns the Danes had occupied, there must be another thousand. That was a strong force, but not quite strong enough to capture all the kingdom. That would have to wait until spring when reinforcements would come from Denmark or from the three conquered kingdoms of England. I rode back to the watermill as dusk fell. There was a frost and the air was still. Three rooks flew across the river as I dismounted. I reckoned one of Alfred’s men could rub my horse down; all I wanted was to find some warmth and it was plain Alfred had risked lighting a fire, for smoke was pouring out of the hole in the turf roof.

They were all crouched about the small fire and I joined them, stretching my hands to the flames. ‘Two thousand men,’ I said, ‘more or less.’

No one answered.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I asked, and looked around the faces.

There were five faces. Only five.

‘Where’s the king?’ I asked.

‘He went,’ Adelbert said helplessly.

‘He did what?’

‘He went to the town,’ the priest said. He was wearing Alfred’s rich blue cloak and I assumed Alfred had taken Adelbert’s plain garment.

I stared at him. ‘You let him go?’

‘He insisted,’ Egwine said.

‘How could we stop him?’ Adelbert pleaded. ‘He’s the king!’

‘You hit the bastard, of course,’ I snarled. ‘You hold him down till the madness passes. When did he go?’

‘Just after you left,’ the priest said miserably, ‘and he took my harp,’ he added.

‘And when did he say he’d be back?’

‘By nightfall.’

‘It is nightfall,’ I said. I stood and stamped out the fire. ‘You want the Danes to come and investigate the smoke?’ I doubted the Danes would come, but I wanted the damned fools to suffer. ‘You,’ I pointed to one of the four soldiers, ‘rub my horse down. Feed it.’

I went back to the door. The first stars were bright and the snow glinted under a sickle moon.

‘Where are you going?’ Adelbert had followed me.

‘To find the king, of course.’

If he lived. And if he did not, then Iseult was dead.

I had to beat on Cippanhamm’s western gate, provoking a disgruntled voice from the far side demanding to know who I was.

‘Why aren’t you up on the ramparts?’ I asked in return.

The bar was lifted and the gate opened a few inches. A face peered out, then vanished as I pushed the gate hard inwards, banging it against the suspicious guard. ‘My horse went lame,’ I said, ‘and I’ve walked here.’

He recovered his balance and pushed the gate shut. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again.

‘Messenger from Svein.’

‘Svein!’ He lifted the bar and dropped it into place. ‘Has he caught Alfred yet?’

‘I’ll tell Guthrum that news before I tell you.’

‘Just asking,’ he said.

‘Where is Guthrum?’ I asked. I had no intention of going anywhere near the Danish chieftain for, after my insults to his dead mother, the best I could hope for was a swift death, and the likelihood was a very slow one.

‘He’s in Alfred’s hall,’ the man said, and pointed south. ‘That side of town, so you’ve still farther to walk.’ It never occurred to him that any messenger from Svein would never ride alone through Wessex, that such a man would come with an escort of fifty or sixty men, but he was too cold to think, and besides, with my long hair and my thick arm rings I looked like a Dane. He retreated into the house beside the gate where his comrades were clustered around a hearth and I walked on into a town made strange. Houses were missing, burned in the first fury of the Danish assault, and the large church by the market place on the hilltop was nothing but blackened beams touched white by the snow. The streets were frozen mud, and only I moved there, for the cold was keeping the Danes in the remaining houses. I could hear singing and laughter. Light leaked past shutters or glowed through smoke-holes in low roofs. I was cold and I was angry. There were men here who could recognise me, and men who might recognise Alfred, and his stupidity had put us both in danger. Would he have been mad enough to go back to his own hall? He must have guessed that was where Guthrum would be living and he would surely not risk being recognised by the Danish leader, which suggested he would be in the town rather than the royal compound.

I was walking towards Eanflæd’s old tavern when I heard the roars. They were coming from the east side of town and I followed the sound which led me to the nunnery by the river wall. I had never been inside the convent, but the gate was open and the courtyard inside was lit by two vast fires which offered some warmth to the men nearest the flames. And there were at least a hundred men in the courtyard, bellowing encouragement and insults at two other men who were fighting in the mud and melted snow between the fires. They were fighting with swords and shields, and every clash of blade against blade or of blade against wood brought raucous shouts. I glanced briefly at the fighters, then searched for faces in the crowd. I was looking for Haesten, or anyone else who might recognise me, but I saw no one, though it was hard to distinguish faces in the flickering shadows. There was no sign of any nuns and I assumed they had either fled, were dead or had been taken away for the conquerors’ amusement.