Saxon 01 - The Last Kingdom Read Free Page B

suggested God had abandoned us, but there was also good news for it seemed that my old namesake, King Osbert, Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom had made an alliance with his rival, the would-be King Ælla, and they had agreed to put aside their rivalry, join forces, and take Eoferwic back. That sounds simple, but of course it took time. Messengers rode, advisers confused, priests prayed, and it was not till Christmas that Osbert and Ælla sealed their peace with oaths, and then they summoned my father's men, but of course we could not march in winter. The Danes were in Eoferwic and we left them there until the early spring when news came that the Northumbrian army would gather outside the city and, to my joy, my father decreed that I would ride south with him.

"He's too young," Gytha protested.

"He is almost eleven," my father said, "and he must learn to fight."

"He would be better served by continuing Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom his lessons," she said.

"A dead reader is no use to Bebbanburg," my father said, "and Uhtred is now the heir so he must learn to fight."

That night he made Beocca show me the parchments kept in the church, the parchments that said we owned the land.

Beocca had been teaching me to read for two years, but I was a bad pupil and, to Beocca's despair, I could make neither head nor tail of the writings. Beocca sighed, then told me what was in them. "They describe the land," he said, "the land your father owns, and they say the land is his by God's law and by our own law." And one day, it seemed, the lands would be mine for that night my father dictated a new will in which he said that if he died then Bebbanburg would belong to his son Uhtred, and I would Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom be ealdorman, and all the folk between the rivers Tuede and the Tine would swear allegiance to me. "We were kings here once," he told me, "and our land was called Bernicia." He pressed his seal into the red wax, leaving the impression of a wolf's head.

"We should be kings again," Ælfric, my uncle, said.

"It doesn't matter what they call us," my father said curtly, "so long as they obey us," and then he made Ælfric swear on the comb of Saint Cuthbert that he would respect the new will and acknowledge me as Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Ælfric did so swear. "But it won't happen," my father said. "We shall slaughter these Danes like sheep in a fold, and we shall ride back here with plunder and honor."

"Pray God," Ælfric said.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom Ælfric and thirty men would stay at Bebbanburg to guard the fortress and protect the women. He gave me gifts that night; a leather coat that would protect against a sword cut and, best of all, a helmet around which Ealdwulf the smith had fashioned a band of gilt bronze. "So they will know you are a prince," Ælfric said. "He's not a prince," my father said, "but an ealdorman's heir." Yet he was pleased with his brother's gifts to me and added two of his own, a short sword and a horse. The sword was an old blade, cut down, with a leather scabbard lined with fleece. It had a chunky hilt, was clumsy, yet that night I slept with the blade under my blanket.

And next morning, as my stepmother wept on the ramparts of the High Gate, and under a blue, clean sky, we rode to war. Two hundred and fifty men went south, following Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom our banner of the wolf's head.

That was in the year 867, and it was the first time I ever went to war.

And I have never ceased.

"You will not fight in the shield wall," my father said.

"No, Father."

"Only men can stand in the shield wall," he said, "but you will watch, you will learn, and you will discover that the most dangerous stroke is not the sword or ax that you can see, but the one you cannot see, the blade that comes beneath the shields to bite your ankles."

He grudgingly gave me much other advice as we followed the long road south. Of the two hundred and fifty men who went to