Saxon 01 - The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online

off my sorrow because, in truth, I had never seen such things before, though, God be thanked, I took plenty of such rewards myself in times to come.

"Bebbanburg?" Ravn said. "I was there before you were born. It was twenty years ago."

"At Bebbanburg?"

"Not in the fortress," he admitted, "it was far too strong. But I was to the north of it, on the island where the monks pray. I killed six men there. Not monks, men. Warriors." He smiled to himself, remembering. "Now tell me, Ealdorman Uhtred of Bebbanburg," he went on, "what is happening."

So I became his eyes and I told him of the men dancing, and the men stripping the women of their clothes, and what they then Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom did to the women, but Ravn had no interest in that. "What," he wanted to know, "are Ivar and Ubba doing?"

"Ivar and Ubba?"

"They will be on the high platform. Ubba is the shorter and looks like a barrel with a beard, and Ivar is so skinny that he is called Ivar the Boneless. He is so thin that you could press his feet together and shoot him from a bowstring."

I learned later that Ivar and Ubba were the two oldest of three brothers and the joint leaders of this Danish army. Ubba was asleep, his black-haired head cushioned by his arms that, in turn, were resting on the remnants of his meal, but Ivar the Boneless was awake. He had sunken eyes, a face like a skull, yellow hair drawn back to the nape of his neck, and an expression of sullen Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom malevolence. His arms were thick with the golden rings Danes like to wear to prove their prowess in battle, while a gold chain was coiled around his neck. Two men were talking to him. One, standing just behind Ivar, seemed to whisper into his ear, while the other, a worried-looking man, sat between the two brothers. I described all this to Ravn, who wanted to know what the worried man sitting between Ivar and Ubba looked like.

"No arm rings," I said, "a gold circlet round his neck. Brown hair, long beard, quite old."

"Everyone looks old to the young," Ravn said. "That must be King Egbert."

"King Egbert?" I had never heard of such a person.

"He was Ealdorman Egbert," Ravn Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom explained, "but he made his peace with us in the winter and we have rewarded him by making him king here in Northumbria. He is king, but we are the lords of the land." He chuckled, and young as I was I understood the treachery involved. Ealdorman Egbert held estates to the south of our kingdom and was what my father had been in the north, a great power, and the Danes had suborned him, kept him from the fight, and now he would be called king, yet it was plain that he would be a king on a short leash. "If you are to live," Ravn said to me, "then it would be wise to pay your respects to Egbert."

"Live?" I blurted out the word. I had somehow thought that having survived the battle then of course I would live. I was a child, someone else's responsibility, but Ravn's words hammered home my reality. I should never have confessed my rank, I Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom thought. Better to be a living slave than a dead ealdorman.

"I think you'll live," Ravn said. "Ragnar likes you and Ragnar gets what he wants. He says you attacked him?"

"I did, yes."

"He would have enjoyed that. A boy who attacks Earl Ragnar? That must be some boy, eh? Too good a boy to waste on death he says, but then my son always had a regrettably sentimental side. I would have chopped your head off, but here you are, alive, and I think it would be wise if you were to bow to Egbert."

Now, I think, looking back so far into my past, I have probably changed that night's events. There was a feast, Ivar and Ubba were there, Egbert was trying to look like a king, Ravn was kind to me, but I am sure I Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom was more confused and far more frightened than I have made it sound. Yet in other ways my memories of the feast are very precise.

Watch and learn, my