The Last Kingdom Series

We were still shouting as we crashed into the spinney’s undergrowth, trampling brambles and saplings. No more arrows came and the noise slowly died. I stopped in the shadow of a thick trunk. ‘What were we shouting about?’ Berg asked.

‘This,’ Finan said, and tugged the arrow that was still caught in my cloak. He ripped it free and held it into the light. ‘Christ, that’s a long arrow!’

‘Get into shadow,’ I told him. ‘All of you.’

‘Bastard’s long gone,’ he growled, ‘he can’t see us.’

There was no moon, but our campfires and the flames from the Welsh encampment cast plenty of sullen red light among the trees. I started laughing. ‘What?’ Egil asked.

‘We’re not supposed to carry weapons,’ I said, and gestured at the men in the trees, all of whom were carrying swords or axes, while still more of our men were streaming towards us from the shelters and all carrying their bright weapons.

Egil led some of his men to the southern edge of the trees, but went no further. The Norsemen just stood there, gazing into the night, searching for an archer who had been swallowed in the darkness. Finan hefted the missile. ‘This isn’t from a short bow,’ he said dourly.

‘No.’

‘It’s a hunting arrow.’ He ran his fingers over the feather fletching. ‘From one of those big bows that the Welsh use.’

‘Some Saxons use them.’

‘But rarely.’ He flinched as he tested the arrowhead. ‘Newly sharpened too. The earsling wanted you dead.’

I shivered as I remembered that flicker of light in the darkness, and that darkness was lessening because men, attracted by the noise, were running towards the spinney carrying flaming torches. The Welsh were closest and they came first, led by a huge man swathed in a fur cloak and carrying a mighty war axe. He barked an angry question in his own language and seemed unperturbed when my men raised swords to confront him, but before anyone could strike a blow a tall, bald-headed priest pushed the man aside. The priest stared at me. ‘Lord Uhtred,’ he said, sounding amused. ‘Does trouble follow you?’

‘It finds me, Father Anwyn,’ I said, ‘and it’s good to see you.’

‘Bishop Anwyn now,’ he responded, then spoke sharply to the huge man, who reluctantly lowered his formidable axe. Anwyn looked around the spinney, now crowded with my men and lit brightly by the torches the Welshmen carried. He smiled as he counted the hammer amulets. ‘I see you still keep bad company, Lord Uhtred? And what were they shouting about? Didn’t you know there was a service? Bishop Oswald was preaching!’ He paused, looking at me, ‘Bishop Oswald!’

‘I’m supposed to know who that is?’ I asked sourly. Anwyn’s tone suggested that Bishop Oswald was famous, but why would I care? A long life had condemned me to hear too many Christian sermons. ‘Why weren’t you listening?’ I asked Anwyn.

‘Why would I need a bloody Saxon bishop to tell me how to behave?’ Anwyn retorted, and his long bony face, usually so stern, broke into a smile. I had met him years before on a Welsh beach where my men and King Hywel’s men had slaughtered Rognvald’s Vikings. It was on that beach that Hywel had granted Berg his life. ‘And what were you shouting about?’ Anwyn asked. ‘Were you frightened by a mouse?’

‘By this,’ I said, taking the arrow from Finan.

Anwyn took it from me, hefted it and frowned. He must have guessed what I was thinking because he shook his head. ‘It wasn’t one of our men. Come, talk to King Hywel.’

‘He’s not in Rome?’

‘You think I’d ask you if he was in Rome?’ Anwyn replied. ‘The thought of keeping your company on that long journey gives me horrors, Lord Uhtred, but Hywel will want to meet you. For some strange reason he speaks well of you.’

But before we could move, still more men, carrying still more torches, appeared from the western side of the spinney. Most carried shields that bore Æthelstan’s dragon and lightning bolt and they were led by a young man mounted on an impressive grey horse. He had to duck his head to get beneath the branches, then curbed the stallion close to me. ‘You’re carrying a sword,’ he snarled at me, then looked around at all the other weapons. ‘The king has commanded that only sentries carry weapons.’

‘I’m a sentry,’ I said.

That annoyed him, as it was meant to. He stared at me. He was young, maybe just twenty-one or -two, his boyish face clean-shaven. He had very blue eyes, bright blond hair, a long nose, and a haughty expression. In truth he was striking, a handsome man, made more striking by the quality of his mail and by the thick gold chain he wore about his neck. He carried a drawn sword and I could see that the heavy crosspiece was glinting with more gold. He still stared at me, his distaste for what he saw evident on his face. ‘And who,’ he asked, ‘are you?’

One of his own men began to answer, but was hushed by Fraomar who had come with the young man. Fraomar was smiling. So was Anwyn. ‘I’m a sentry,’ I said again.

‘You call me lord, old man,’ the horseman said, then leaned from the saddle and lifted his gold-hilted sword so that the blade pointed at my hammer. ‘You call me lord,’ he said again, ‘and you hide that idolatrous bauble around your neck. Now who are you?’

I smiled. ‘I’m the man who will ram Serpent-Breath up your arsehole and slice off your tongue, you rat-faced piece of worm-shit.’

‘God be praised,’ Bishop Anwyn intervened hurriedly, ‘that the Lord Uhtred still possesses the tongue of angels.’

The sword dropped. The young man looked startled. He also, to my satisfaction, looked scared. ‘And you call me lord,’ I growled.

He had nothing to say. His horse whinnied and stepped sideways as Bishop Anwyn took another step forward. ‘There’s no trouble here, Lord Ealdred. We just came because King Hywel is eager to see Lord Uhtred again.’

So this, I thought, was Ealdred, another of Æthelstan’s favourite companions. He had made a fool of himself, thinking that his closeness to the king made him invulnerable, and he had suddenly become aware that he and his men were confronted and outnumbered by bitter Welshmen and hostile Northmen, both enemies of the Saxons. ‘Weapons,’ he said, but without any of his former arrogance, ‘are not to be carried in the camp.’

‘Were you talking to me?’ I demanded harshly.

He hesitated. ‘No, lord,’ he said, almost choking on the last word, then turned his stallion with a brutal jerk of the reins and spurred away.

‘Poor boy,’ Anwyn said, plainly amused. ‘But that poor boy will cause you trouble, lord.’

‘Let him try,’ I snarled.

‘No, let King Hywel tell you. He’ll be pleased you’re here. Come, lord.’

So I took Finan, Egil and Berg, and went to meet a king.

I have met many kings. Some, like Guthfrith, were fools, some struggled because they never knew what to do, while a few, very few, were men who commanded loyalty. Alfred was one, Constantine of Alba another, and the third was Hywel of Dyfed. I knew Alfred best of the three and since his death many folk have asked me about him, and I invariably say that he was as honest as he was clever. Is that true? He was as capable of cunning as Constantine or Hywel, but for all three men that cunning was always used in the service of what they believed was the best for their people. I disagreed with Alfred frequently, but I trusted him because he was a man of his word. I hardly knew Constantine, but those who knew him well often compared him to Alfred. Alfred, Constantine and Hywel were the three greatest kings of my lifetime, and all three had wisdom and a natural authority, but of the three I liked Hywel the best. He had an ease that Alfred lacked and a humour as broad as his smile. ‘My God,’ he greeted me, ‘but look what an ill wind has blown to my tent. I thought a pig had farted!’

I bowed to him. ‘Lord King.’

‘Sit down, man, sit down. Of course the King of the Sais has a great monastery as his lodging, but we poor Welshmen have to endure this,’ he waved around the great tent, which was carpeted with thick woollen rugs, warmed by a brazier, furnished with benches and tables, and lit by a host of tall, thick candles, ‘this hovel!’ He turned and spoke in Welsh to a servant who hurried to bring me a drinking horn that he filled with wine. A dozen other men were in the tent, sitting on benches around the brazier and listening to a harpist who played in the shadows. Hywel waved the man to silence, then smiled at me. ‘You’re still living, Lord Uhtred! I am pleased.’

‘You’re gracious, lord King.’

‘Ah, he butters me!’ He spoke to the other men in the tent, most of whom I suspected did not speak the Saxon tongue, but they smiled anyway. ‘I was gracious with His Holiness the Pope,’ Hywel continued, ‘who suffers from aches in his joints. I told the poor man to rub them with wool grease mixed with the urine of goats, but did he listen to me? He did not! Do you suffer from aches, Lord Uhtred?’

‘Frequently, lord King.’

‘Goat’s piss! Rub it in, man, rub it in. It might even improve the way you smell!’ He grinned. He looked as I remembered him, a sturdy man with a broad, wind-reddened face and eyes that readily creased with merriment. Age had whitened his clipped beard and his short hair over which he wore a simple gilt-bronze circlet. He looked to be about fifty years old, but he was still hale. He signalled to my companions. ‘Sit, all of you, sit. I remember you.’ He pointed at Finan. ‘You’re the Irishman?’

‘I am, lord King.’

‘Finan,’ I supplied the name.

‘And you fought like a demon, I remember that! You poor man, I’d think an Irishman had better sense than to fight for a Sais lord, eh? And you are?’ He nodded at Egil.

‘Egil Skallagrimmrson, lord King.’ Egil bowed, then touched Berg’s elbow, ‘and this is my brother, Berg Skallagrimmrson, who has to thank you.’

‘Me! Why would a Norseman thank me?’

‘You spared my life, lord King,’ Berg said, blushing as he bowed.

‘I did?’

‘On the beach,’ I reminded him, ‘where you killed Rognvald.’

Hywel’s face darkened as he remembered that fight. He made the sign of the cross. ‘Upon my word, but that was a wicked man. I take no pleasure in death, but that man’s screams were like the balm of Gilead to my soul.’ He looked at me. ‘Is he honest?’ He jerked his head at Berg. ‘Is he a good man?’

‘A very good man, lord King.’

‘But not a Christian,’ he said flatly.

‘I swore to have him taught the faith,’ I answered, ‘because you demanded that as a condition for his life, and I did not break my word.’

‘He chose otherwise?’

‘He did, lord King.’

‘The world is full of fools, is it not? And why, good bishop, are you holding an arrow? Do you plan to stab me?’

Anwyn explained what had happened in the darkness. He spoke in Welsh, but I did not need a translator to understand the tale. Hywel grunted when the bishop finished and took the arrow from him. ‘You think, Lord Uhtred,’ he asked, ‘it was one of my men?’

‘I don’t know, lord King.’

‘Did the arrow kill you?’

I smiled. ‘No, lord King.’

‘Then it wasn’t one of my boys. My boys don’t miss. And this isn’t one of my arrows. We fletch them with goose feathers. These look like eagle feathers?’ He tossed the arrow onto the brazier where the ashwood shaft flared up. ‘And other men in Britain use the long hunting bow, do they not?’ Hywel asked. ‘I hear they have some small skill with it in Legeceasterscir?’

‘It’s a rare skill, lord King.’

‘So it is, so it is. And wisdom is rare too, and you are going to need wisdom, Lord Uhtred.’

‘I am?’

Hywel gestured to a man sitting next to him, a man whose face was hidden by the deep hood of his cloak. ‘I have strange visitors this night, Lord Uhtred!’ Hywel said cheerfully, ‘you, your pagans, and now a new friend from a far place.’

The stink of the arrow’s burning feathers soured the tent as the man pushed back his hood and I saw it was Cellach, eldest son of Constantine and Prince of Alba.

I bowed my head. ‘Lord Prince,’ I said, and knew that Hywel was right; I would need wisdom.

I was among Æthelstan’s enemies.

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