Saxon: The Book of Dreams (Saxon 1) Read Free Page A

change his mind about my exile and order my execution instead.
    ‘That my personal slave goes with me,’ I said.
    Once again Offa glanced towards my uncle.
    ‘Is this slave of any value?’
    ‘Hardly, my lord,’ answered Cyneric. He did not bother to keep the sneer from his face. ‘He’s a defective cripple. An out-lander who can barely string two words
together.’
    ‘He looked after me throughout my childhood,’ I interrupted. ‘I am in his debt.’
    ‘And you in mine,’ said Offa coldly. ‘Take your worn-out slave with you, but he has cost you a day’s grace. The day after tomorrow you will be escorted to the coast and
put on the first ship sailing for Frankia.’

Chapter Two

    O SRIC, MY BODY SLAVE, had been to sea before, that I knew. My father had bought him from a travelling dealer who must have heard that the woman looking
after my brother and me was refusing to touch us after she noticed something strange about our eyes. The other household servants had been equally frightened.
    ‘Make a good babysitter, he would. He’s quiet and gentle and, with that gammy pin, not likely to run away,’ the slaver had said as he showed off a battered-looking, scrawny
man, perhaps thirty years old with skin the colour of a fallen autumn leaf. The unfortunate man had evidently been in a very bad accident, for his head was permanently canted over on a slant and
his left leg broken and set so badly that it was crooked.
    ‘Where does he come from?’ my father had asked.
    The dealer had shrugged.
    ‘I got him down in the west country, part exchange for a couple of brawny lasses fit for mine work. Locals found him washed up on the rocks, like a half-dead mackerel. Probably off a tin
ship that wrecked.’
    My father had looked doubtful.
    ‘Worth owning someone as hardy as that,’ the slave dealer had wheedled. ‘Any other man would have died. Besides, he doesn’t understand any speech so he won’t be
taking up any wild ideas and gossip.’
    My father had allowed himself to be persuaded. He’d paid a few coins and named his new slave Osric as a joke; his namesake was a rival kinglet in neighbouring Wessex, a man famously vain
of his good looks.
    Over the years Osric became an essential, silent member of our household. He spoke so rarely that many visitors thought he was a mute. Growing up in his care, however, I knew that he learned our
language in secret. When alone with his two charges, he would talk with us, though only a few words at a time. As I grew older I came to the conclusion that he preferred to stay withdrawn, locked
away in his battered body.
    ‘Are you afraid of the sea after what it did to you?’ I asked Osric as we had our first glimpse of the distant blue line on the horizon. We were travelling on foot, since Offa had
seen no reason to provide us with horses, only a couple of Mercian armed guards plodding along behind us, out of earshot.
    Osric gave a slight shake of his head. We had left the burgh at daybreak two days earlier. There my father and two brothers lay side by side under a single, fresh barrow grave. I had buried them
hastily with the few paltry goods that had survived the Mercian sack – a handful of damaged and long-discarded weapons, some cheap ornaments, a few pottery jugs and bowls and the bones of the
pigs slaughtered for the funeral feast. These would have to suffice for their banquet in the afterlife. The only item of real value in the grave was my father’s best hunting hound. A courser
with a glossy dark-red coat and a nervous temperament, the creature had panicked and run off during the battle and had escaped becoming part of the Mercian plunder. We were digging the burial pit
when the hound reappeared, slinking on its belly across the raw earth, whining as it sought its master. I coaxed the dog closer, looped a cord around its neck and strangled it. Then I carefully
laid the body at my father’s feet. He had loved the hunt. Now he would at least be