Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

ever seen. It was curly, and his beard was curly, and both were flame-colored. Eilaf the Red, he was called, and though he was tall and heavy-set, he somehow seemed smaller than Haesten, who had a sublime confidence in his own abilities. “You are welcome, Lord Uhtred,” Eilaf said.
    I ignored him. Haesten was watching me, his face still clouded, but then I grinned. “Yet all Guthrum’s army ran that day,” I said, “and the ones who didn’t are all dead. So I am glad that I saw you run.”
    He smiled then. “I killed eight men at Ethandun,” he said, eager for his men to know that he was no coward.
    “Then I am relieved I did not face your sword,” I said, recovering my earlier insult with insincere flattery. Then I turned to the redheaded Eilaf. “And you,” I asked, “were you at Ethandun?”
    “No, lord,” he said.
    “Then you missed a rare fight,” I said. “Isn’t that so, Haesten? A fight to remember!”
    “A massacre in the rain, lord,” Haesten said.
    “And I still limp from it,” I said, which was true, though the limp was small and hardly inconvenient.
    I was named to three other men, three Danes. All of them were dressed well and had arm rings to show their prowess. I forget their names now, but they were there to see me, and they had brought their followers with them. I understood as Haesten made the introductions that he was showing me off. He was proving that I had joined him, and that it was therefore safe for them to join him. Haesten was brewing rebellion in that hall. I drew him to one side. “Who are they?” I demanded.
    “They have lands and men in this part of Guthrum’s kingdom.”
    “And you want their men?”
    “We must make an army,” Haesten said simply.
    I gazed down at him. This rebellion, I thought, was not just against Guthrum of East Anglia, but against Alfred of Wessex, and if it was to succeed then all Britain would need be roused by sword, spear, and ax. “And if I refuse to join you?” I asked him.
    “You will, lord,” he said confidently.
    “I will?” I asked.
    “Because tonight, lord, the dead will speak to you.” Haesten smiled, and just then Eilaf intervened to say that all was ready. “We shall raisethe dead,” Haesten said dramatically, touching the hammer amulet about his neck, “and then we shall feast.” He gestured toward the door at the back of the hall. “This way, if you will, lord. This way.”
    And so I went to meet the dead.
     
    Haesten led us into the darkness and I remember thinking how easy it was to say the dead rose and spoke if the thing was done in such darkness. How would we know? We could hear the corpse perhaps, but not see him, and I was about to protest when two of Eilaf’s men came from the hall with burning brands that flared bright in the damp night. They led us past a pen of pigs and the beasts’ eyes caught the firelight. It had rained while we were in the hall, just a passing winter shower, but water still dripped from the bare branches. Finan, nervous at the sorcery we were about to witness, stayed close to me.
    We followed a path downhill to a small pasture beside what I took to be a barn, and there the torches were thrust into waiting heaps of wood that caught the fire fast so that the flames leaped up to illuminate the barn’s wooden wall and wet thatch. As the light brightened I saw that it was not a pasture at all, but a graveyard. The small field was dotted with low earth heaps, and was well fenced to stop animals rooting up the dead.
    “That was our church,” Huda explained. He had appeared beside me and nodded at what I had assumed was the barn.
    “You’re a Christian?” I asked.
    “Yes, lord. But we have no priest now.” He made the sign of the cross. “Our dead go to their rest unshriven.”
    “I have a son in a Christian graveyard,” I said, and wondered why I had said it. I rarely thought of my dead infant son. I had not known him. His mother and I were estranged. Yet I remembered him on