The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online

bitch?” I asked her in Danish.
    She smiled at me. “Of course I did,” she said, “I kill all priests.”
    “She killed the priest, lord,” I told Alfred.
    He shuddered. “Take her outside,” he ordered Steapa, “and guard her well.” He held up a hand. “She is not to be molested!” He waited till Skade was gone before looking at me. “You’re welcome, Lord Uhtred,” he said, “you and your men. But I had hoped you would bring more.”
    “I brought enough, lord King,” I said.
    “Enough for what?” Bishop Asser asked.
    I looked at the runt. He was a bishop, but still wore his monkish robes cinched tight around his scrawny waist. He had a face like a starved stoat, with pale green eyes and thin lips. He spent half his time in the wastelands of his native Wales, and half whisperingpious poison into Alfred’s ears, and together the two men had made a law code for Wessex, and it was my amusement and ambition to break every one of those laws before either the king or the Welsh runt died. “Enough,” I said, “to tear Harald and his men into bloody ruin.”
    Æthelflæd smiled at that. She alone of Alfred’s family was my friend. I had not seen her in four years and she looked much thinner now. She was only a year or two above twenty, but appeared older and sadder, yet her hair was still lustrous gold and her eyes as blue as the summer sky. I winked at her, as much as anything to annoy her husband, my cousin, who immediately rose to the bait and snorted. “If Harald were that easy to destroy,” Æthelred said, “we would have done it already.”
    “How?” I asked, “by watching him from the hills?” Æthelred grimaced. Normally he would have argued with me, because he was a belligerent and proud man, but he looked pale. He had an illness, no one knew what, and it left him tired and weak for long stretches. He was perhaps forty in that year, and his red hair had strands of white at his temples. This, I guessed, was one of his bad days. “Harald should have been killed weeks ago,” I taunted him scornfully.
    “Enough!” Alfred slapped the arm of his chair, startling a leather-hooded falcon that was perched on a lectern beside the altar. The bird flapped his wings, but the jesses held him firm. Alfred grimaced. His face told me what I well knew, that he needed me and did not want to need me. “We could not attack Harald,” he explained patiently, “so long as Haesten threatened our northern flank.”
    “Haesten couldn’t threaten a wet puppy,” I said, “he’s too frightened of defeat.”
    I was arrogant that day, arrogant and confident, because there are times when men need to see arrogance. These men had spent days arguing about what to do, and in the end they had done nothing, and all that time they had been multiplying Harald’s forces in their minds until they were convinced he was invincible. Alfred, meanwhile, had deliberately refrained from seeking my help because he wanted to hand the reins of Wessex and Mercia to his son and to his son-in-law, which meant giving them reputations as leaders, but their leadership had failed, and so Alfred had sent for me. And now, because they needed it, I countered their fears with an arrogant assurance.
    “Harald has five thousand men,” Ealdorman Æthelhelm of Wiltunscir said softly. Æthelhelm was a good man, but he too seemed infected by the timidity that had overtaken Alfred’s entourage. “He brought two hundred ships!” he added.
    “If he has two thousand men, I’d be astonished,” I said. “How many horses does he have?” No one knew, or at least no one answered. Harald might well have brought as many as five thousand men, but his army consisted only of those who had horses.
    “However many men he has,” Alfred said pointedly, “he must attack this burh to advance further into Wessex.”
    That was nonsense, of course. Harald could go north or south of Æscengum, but there was no future in arguing that with Alfred, who had a