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

‘I do not want Bebbanburg to be a gift of the Danes,’ I answered.

She thought about that, and understood it. ‘But do you think,’ she asked scornfully, ‘that the West Saxons will give you Bebbanburg? It’s at the other end of Britain, Uhtred, and the last Saxon king is rotting in a swamp.’

‘This will give it to me,’ I said, pulling back my cloak to show Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

‘You and Ragnar can rule the north,’ she said.

‘Maybe we will,’ I said. ‘So tell Ragnar that when this is all finished, when all is decided, I shall go north with him. I shall fight Kjartan. But in my own time.’

‘I hope you live to keep that promise,’ she said, then leaned forward and kissed my cheek. Then, without another word, she turned and walked back to the church.

Alfred let out a breath. ‘Who is Kjartan?’

‘An enemy,’ I said shortly. I tried to lead him away, but he stopped me.

He was staring at Brida who was nearing the church. ‘That is the girl who was with you at Wintanceaster?’

‘Yes.’ He was talking of the time when I had first come to Wessex and Brida had been with me.

‘And does Iseult truly see the future?’

‘She has not been wrong yet.’

He made the sign of the cross, then let me lead him back through the town. It was quieter now, but he would not go with me to the western gate, insisting we return to the nunnery where, for a moment, we both crouched near one of the dying fires in the courtyard to get what warmth we could from the embers. Men slept in the nunnery church, but the courtyard was now deserted and quiet, and Alfred took a piece of half-burning wood and, using it as a torch, went to the row of small doors that led to the nuns’ sleeping cells. One door had been fastened with two hasps and a short length of thick chain and Alfred paused there.

‘Draw your sword,’ he ordered me.

When Serpent-Breath was naked he unwound the chain from the hasps and pushed the door inwards. He entered cautiously, pushing the hood back from his face. He held the torch high, and in its light I saw the big man huddled on the floor.

‘Steapa!’ Alfred hissed.

Steapa was only pretending to be asleep and he uncoiled from the floor with wolf-like speed, lashing out at Alfred, and I rammed the sword towards his breast, but then he saw Alfred’s bruised face and he froze, oblivious of the blade. ‘Lord?’

‘You’re coming with us,’ Alfred said.

‘Lord!’ Steapa fell to his knees in front of his king.

‘It’s cold out there,’ Alfred said. It was freezing inside the cell as well. ‘You can sheath your sword, Uhtred.’ Steapa looked at me and seemed vaguely surprised to find I was the man he had been fighting when the Danes came. ‘The two of you will be friends,’ Alfred said sternly, and the big man nodded. ‘And we have one other person to fetch,’ Alfred said, ‘so come.’

‘One other person?’ I asked.

‘You spoke of a nun,’ Alfred said.

So I had to find the nun’s cell, and she was still there, lying crushed against the wall by a Dane who was snoring flabbily. The flame-light showed a small, frightened face half-hidden by the Dane’s beard. His beard was black and her hair was gold, pale gold, and she was awake and, seeing us, gasped, and that woke the Dane who blinked in the flame-light and then snarled at us as he tried to throw off the thick cloaks serving as blankets. Steapa hit him and it was like the sound of a bullock being clubbed, wet and hard at the same time. The man’s head snapped back and Alfred pulled the cloaks away and the nun tried to hide her nakedness. Alfred hurriedly put the cloaks back. He had been embarrassed and I had been impressed, for she was young and very beautiful and I wondered why such a woman would waste her sweetness on religion. ‘You know who I am?’ Alfred asked her. She shook her head. ‘I am your king,’ he said softly, ‘and you will come with us, sister.’

Her clothes were long gone, so we swathed her in the heavy cloaks. The Dane was dead by now, his throat cut by Wasp-Sting, and I had found a pouch of coins strung around his neck on a leather thong. ‘That money goes to the church,’ Alfred said.

‘I found it,’ I said, ‘and I killed him.’

‘It is the money of sin,’ he said patiently, ‘and must be redeemed.’ He smiled at the nun. ‘Are there any other sisters here?’ he asked.

‘Only me,’ she said in a small voice.

‘And now you are safe, sister.’ He straightened. ‘We can go.’

Steapa carried the nun who was called Hild. She clung to him, whimpering, either from the cold or, more likely, from the memory of her ordeal.

We could have captured Cippanhamm that night with a hundred men. It was so bitterly cold that no guards stood on the ramparts. The gate sentries were in a house by the wall, crouched by the fire, and all the notice they took of the bar being lifted was to shout a bad-tempered question wanting to know who we were. ‘Guthrum’s men,’ I called back, and they did not bother us further. A half-hour later we were in the watermill, reunited with Father Adelbert, Egwine and the three soldiers.

‘We should give thanks to God for our deliverance,’ Alfred said to Father Adelbert, who had been aghast to see the blood and bruises on the king’s face. ‘Say a prayer, father,’ Alfred ordered.

Adelbert prayed, but I did not listen. I just crouched by the fire, thought I would never be warm again, and then slept.

It snowed all next day. Thick snow. We made a fire, careless that the Danes might see the smoke, for no Dane was going to struggle through the bitter cold and deepening snow to investigate one small, far-off trickle of grey against a grey sky.

Alfred brooded. He spoke little that day, though once he frowned and asked me if it could really be true about Wulfhere. ‘We didn’t see him with Guthrum,’ he added plaintively, desperately hoping that the ealdorman had not betrayed him.

‘The hostages lived,’ I said.

‘Dear God,’ he said, convinced by that argument, and leaned his head against the wall. He watched the snow through one of the small windows. ‘He’s family!’ he said after a while, then fell silent again.

I fed the horses the last of the hay we had brought with us, then sharpened my swords for lack of anything else to do. Hild wept. Alfred tried to comfort her, but he was awkward and had no words, and oddly it was Steapa who calmed her. He talked to her softly, his voice a deep grumble, and when Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting were as sharp as I could make them, and as the snow sifted endlessly onto a silent world, I brooded like Alfred.

I thought of Ragnar wanting my oath. I thought of him wanting my allegiance.

The world began in chaos and it will end in chaos. The gods brought the world into existence, and they will end it when they fight among themselves, but in between the chaos of the world’s birth and the chaos of the world’s death is order, and order is made by oaths, and oaths bind us like the buckles of a harness.

I was bound to Alfred by an oath, and before I gave that oath I had wanted to bind myself to Ragnar, but now I felt affronted that he had even asked me. That was pride growing in me and changing me. I was Uhtred of Bebbanburg, slayer of Ubba, and while I would give an oath to a king I was reluctant to make an oath to an equal. The oath-giver is subservient to the man who accepts the oath. Ragnar would have said I was a friend, he would treat me like a brother, but his assumption that I would give him an oath demonstrated that he still believed I was his follower. I was a lord of Northumbria, but he was a Dane, and to a Dane all Saxons are lesser men, and so he had demanded an oath. If I gave him an oath then he would be generous, but I would be expected to show gratitude, and I could only ever hold Bebbanburg because he allowed me to hold it. I had never thought it all through before, but suddenly, on that cold day, I understood that among the Danes I was as important as my friends, and without friends I was just another landless, masterless warrior. But among the Saxons I was another Saxon, and among the Saxons I did not need another man’s generosity.

‘You look thoughtful, Uhtred,’ Alfred interrupted my reverie.

‘I was thinking, lord,’ I said, ‘that we need warm food.’ I fed the fire, then went outside to the stream where I knocked away the skim of ice and scooped water into a pot. Steapa had followed me outside, not to talk, but to piss, and I stood behind him. ‘At the witanegemot,’ I said, ‘you lied about Cynuit.’

He tied the scrap of rope that served as a belt and turned to look at me. ‘If the Danes had not come,’ he said in his growling voice, ‘I would have killed you.’

I did not argue with that, for he was probably right. ‘At Cynuit,’ I said instead, ‘when Ubba died, where were you?’

‘There.’

‘I didn’t see you,’ I said. ‘I was in the thick of the battle, but I didn’t see you.’

‘You think I wasn’t there?’ he was angry.

‘You were with Odda the Younger?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘You were with him,’ I guessed, ‘because his father told you to protect him?’ He nodded again. ‘And Odda the Younger,’ I said, ‘stayed a long way from any danger. Isn’t that right?’

He did not answer, but his silence told me I was right. He decided he had nothing more to say to me so started back towards the mill, but I pulled on his arm to stop him. He was surprised by that. Steapa was so big and so strong and so feared that he was unused to men using force on him, and I could see the slow anger burning in him. I fed it. ‘You were Odda’s nursemaid,’ I sneered. ‘The great Steapa Snotor was a nursemaid. Other men faced and fought the Danes and you just held Odda’s hand.’

He just stared at me. His face, so tight-skinned and expressionless, was like an animal’s gaze, nothing there but hunger and anger and violence. He wanted to kill me, especially after I used his nickname, but I understood something more about Steapa Snotor. He was truly stupid. He would kill me if he was ordered to kill me, but without someone to instruct him he did not know what to do, so I thrust the pot of water at him. ‘Carry that inside,’ I told him. He hesitated. ‘Don’t stand there like a dumb ox!’ I snapped. ‘Take it! And don’t spill it.’ He took the pot. ‘It has to go on the fire,’ I told him, ‘and next time we fight the Danes you’ll be with me.’