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

‘There was no gatekeeper,’ I said.

‘He was having a piss, lord,’ the steward explained.

‘There are to be no weapons in hall,’ Harald insisted.

That was customary. Men get drunk in hall and can do enough damage to each other with the knives we use to cut meat, and drunken men with swords and axes can turn a supper table into a butcher’s yard. We gave the steward our weapons, then I hauled off my mail coat and told the steward to hang it on a frame to dry, then have a servant clean its links.

Harald formally welcomed us when our weapons were gone. He said the hall was ours and that we should eat with him as honoured guests. ‘I would hear your news,’ he said, beckoning a servant who brought us pots of ale.

‘Is Odda here?’ I demanded.

‘The father is, yes. Not the son.’

I swore. We had come here with a message for Ealdorman Odda, Odda the Younger, only to discover that it was the wounded father, Odda the Elder, who was in Ocmundtun. ‘So where is the son?’ I asked.

Harald was offended by my brusqueness, but he remained courteous. ‘The ealdorman is in Exanceaster.’

‘Is he besieged there?’

‘No.’

‘And the Danes are in Cridianton?’

‘They are.’

‘And are they besieged?’ I knew the answer to that, but wanted to hear Harald admit it.

‘No,’ he said.

I let the ale pot drop. ‘We come from the king,’ I said. I was supposedly speaking to Harald, but I strode down the hall so that the men on the platforms could hear me. ‘We come from Alfred,’ I said, ‘and Alfred wishes to know why there are Danes in Defnascir. We burned their ships, we slaughtered their ship-guards and we drove them from Cynuit, yet you allow them to live here? Why?’

No one answered. There were no women in the hall, for Harald was a widower who had not remarried, and so the supper guests were all his warriors or else thegns who led men of their own. Some looked at me with loathing, for my words imputed cowardice to them, while others looked down at the floor. Harald glanced at Steapa as if seeking the big man’s support, but Steapa just stood by the fire, his savage face showing nothing. I turned back to stare at Harald. ‘Why are there Danes in Defnascir?’ I demanded.

‘Because they are welcome here,’ a voice said behind me.

I turned to see an old man standing in the door. White hair showed beneath the bandage that swathed his head, and he was so thin and so weak that he had to lean on the door frame for support. At first I did not recognise him, for when I had last spoken to him he had been a big man, well-built and vigorous, but Odda the Elder had taken an axe blow to the skull at Cynuit and he should have died from such a wound, yet somehow he had lived, and here he was, though now he was skeletal, pale, haggard and feeble. ‘They are here,’ Odda said, ‘because they are welcome. As are you, Lord Uhtred, and you, Steapa.’

A woman was tending Odda the Elder. She had tried to pull him away from the door and take him back to his bed, but now she edged past him into the hall and stared at me. Then, seeing me, she did what she had done the very first time she saw me. She did what she had done when she came to marry me. She burst into tears.

It was Mildrith.

Mildrith was robed like a nun in a pale grey dress, belted with rope, over which she wore a large wooden cross. She had a close-fitting grey bonnet from which strands of her fair hair escaped. She stared at me, burst into tears, made the sign of the cross and vanished. A moment later Odda the Elder followed her, too frail to stand any longer, and the door closed.

‘You are indeed welcome here,’ Harald said, echoing Odda’s words.

‘But why are the Danes welcome here?’ I asked.

Because Odda the Younger had made a truce. Harald explained it as we ate. No one in this part of Defnascir had heard how Svein’s ships had been burned at Cynuit, they only knew that Svein’s men, and their women and children, had marched south, burning and plundering, and Odda the Younger had taken his troops to Exanceaster and he had prepared for a siege, but instead Svein had offered to talk. The Danes, quite suddenly, had stopped raiding. Instead they had settled in Cridianton and sent an embassy to Exanceaster, and Svein and Odda had made their private peace.

‘We sell them horses,’ Harald said, ‘and they pay well for them. Twenty shillings a stallion, fifteen a mare.’

‘You sell them horses,’ I said flatly.

‘So they will go away,’ Harald explained.

Servants threw a big birch log onto the fire. Sparks exploded outwards, scattering the hounds who lay just beyond the ring of hearth stones.

‘How many men does Svein lead?’ I asked.

‘Many,’ Harald said.

‘Eight hundred?’ I asked, ‘nine?’ Harald shrugged. ‘They came in twenty-four ships,’ I went on, ‘only twenty-four. So how many men can he have? No more than a thousand, and we killed a few, and others must have died in the winter.’

‘We think he has eight hundred,’ Harald said reluctantly.

‘And how many men in the fyrd? Two thousand?’

‘Of which only four hundred are seasoned warriors,’ Harald said. That was probably true. Most men of the fyrd are farmers, while every Dane is a sword-warrior, but Svein would never have pitted his eight hundred men against two thousand. Not because he feared losing, but because he feared that in gaining victory he would lose a hundred men. That was why he had stopped plundering and made his truce with Odda, because in southern Defnascir he could recover from his defeat at Cynuit. His men could rest, feed, make weapons and get horses. Svein was husbanding his men and making them stronger. ‘It was not my choice,’ Harald said defensively. ‘The ealdorman ordered it.’

‘And the king,’ I retorted, ‘ordered Odda to drive Svein out of Defnascir.’

‘What do we know of the king’s orders?’ Harald asked bitterly, and it was my turn to give him news, to tell how Alfred had escaped Guthrum and was in the great swamp.

‘And some time after Easter,’ I said, ‘we shall gather the shire fyrds and we shall cut Guthrum into pieces.’ I stood. ‘There will be no more horses sold to Svein,’ I said it loudly so that every man in the big hall could hear me.

‘But …’ Harald began, then shook his head. He had doubtless been about to say that Odda the Younger, Ealdorman of Defnascir, had ordered the horses to be sold, but his voice trailed away.

‘What are the king’s orders?’ I demanded of Steapa.

‘No more horses,’ he thundered.

There was silence until Harald irritably gestured at the harpist who struck a chord and began playing a melancholy tune. Someone began singing, but no one joined in and his voice trailed away. ‘I must look to the sentinels,’ Harald said, and he threw me an inquisitive look which I took as an invitation to join him, and so I buckled on my swords and then walked with him down Ocmundtun’s long street to where three spearmen stood guard beside a wooden hut. Harald talked to them for a moment, then led me further east, away from the light of the sentinels’ fire. A moon silvered the valley, lighting the empty road until the track vanished among trees. ‘I have thirty fighting men,’ Harald said suddenly.

He was telling me he was too weak to fight. ‘How many men does Odda have in Exanceaster?’ I asked.

‘A hundred? Hundred and twenty?’

‘The fyrd should have been raised.’

‘I had no orders,’ Harald said.

‘Did you seek any?’

‘Of course I did.’ He was angry with me now. ‘I told Odda we should drive Svein away, but he wouldn’t listen.’

‘Did he tell you the king ordered the fyrd raised?’

‘No.’ Harald paused, staring down the moonlit road. ‘We heard nothing of Alfred, except that he’d been defeated and was hiding. And we heard the Danes were all across Wessex, and that more were gathering in Mercia.’