Read Online The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell - Free Book Online Page B

for the game, Sven himself had his breeches round his ankles, and his sword was lying loose in the clearing’s center and I snatched it up and ran at him. He somehow kept his feet as he turned. “I’ll touch it,” I shouted, and I swung the long blade at his prick, but the sword was heavy, I had not used a man’s blade before, and instead of hitting where I had aimed I sliced it down his bare thigh, opening the skin, and I swung it back, using all my strength, and the blade chopped into his waist where his clothes took most of the force. He fell over, shouting, and his two friends dragged me away as Rorik went to untie his sister.
    That was all that happened. Sven was bleeding, but he managed to pull up his breeches and his friends helped him away and Rorik and I took Thyra back to the homestead where Ravn heard Thyra’s sobs and our excited voices and demanded silence. “Uhtred,” the old man said sternly, “you will wait by the pigsties. Rorik, you will tell me what happened.”
    I waited outside as Rorik told what had happened, then Rorik was sent out and I was summoned indoors to recount the afternoon’s escapade. Thyra was now in her mother’s arms, and her mother and grandmother were furious. “You tell the same tale as Rorik,” Ravn said when I had finished.
    “Because it’s the truth,” I said.
    “So it would seem.”
    “He raped her!” Sigrid insisted.
    “No,” Ravn said firmly, “thanks to Uhtred, he did not.”
    That was the story Ragnar heard when he returned from hunting, and as it made me a hero I did not argue against its essential untruth, which was that Sven would not have raped Thyra for he would not have dared. His foolishness knew few limits, but limits there were, and committing rape on the daughter of Earl Ragnar, his father’s warlord, was beyond even Sven’s stupidity. Yet he had made an enemy and, next day, Ragnar led six men to Kjartan’s house in the neighboring valley. Rorik and I were given horses and told to accompany the men, and I confess I was frightened. I felt I was responsible. I had, after all, started the games in the high woods, but Ragnar did not see it that way. “You haven’t offended me. Sven has.” He spoke darkly, his usual cheerfulness gone. “You did well, Uhtred. You behaved like a Dane.” There was no higher praise he could have given me, and I sensed he was disappointed that I had charged Sven instead of Rorik, but I was older and much stronger than Ragnar’s younger son so it should have been me who fought.
    We rode through the cold woods and I was curious because two of Ragnar’s men carried long branches of hazel that were too spindly to use as weapons, but what they were for I did not like to ask because I was nervous.
    Kjartan’s homestead was in a fold of the hills beside a stream that ran through pastures where he kept sheep, goats, and cattle, though most had been killed now, and the few remaining animals were cropping the last of the year’s grass. It was a sunny day, though cold. Dogs barked as we approached, but Kjartan and his men snarled at them and beat them back to the yard beside the house where he had planted an ash tree that did not look as though it would survive the coming winter, and then, accompanied by four men, none of them armed, he walked toward the approaching horsemen. Ragnar and his six men were armed to the hilt with shields, swords, and war axes, and their broad chests were clad in mail, while Ragnar was wearing my father’s helmet that he had purchased after the fighting at Eoferwic. It was a splendid helmet, its crown and face piece decorated with silver, and I thought it looked better on Ragnar than it had on my father.
    Kjartan the shipmaster was a big man, taller than Ragnar, with a flat, wide face like his son’s and small, suspicious eyes and a huge beard. He glanced at the hazel branches and must have recognized their meaning for he instinctively touched the hammer charm hanging on a silver chain about