The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

peculiar affection for the burh. “So you plan to defeat him here, lord?” I asked instead.
    “I have nine hundred men here,” he said, “and we have the burh’s garrison, and now your three hundred. Harald will break himself on these walls.” I saw Æthelred, Æthelhelm, and Ealdorman Æthelnoth of Sumorsæte all nod their agreement.
    “And I have five hundred men at Silcestre,” Æthelred said, as though that made all the difference.
    “And what are they doing there?” I asked, “pissing in the Temes while we fight?”
    Æthelflæd grinned, while her brother Edward looked affronted. Dear Father Beocca, who had been my childhood tutor, gave me a long-suffering look of reproof. Alfred just sighed. “Lord Æthelred’s men can harry the enemy while they besiege us,” he explained.
    “So our victory, lord,” I said, “depends on Harald attacking us here? On Harald allowing us to kill his men while they try to cross the wall?” Alfred did not answer. A pair of sparrows squabbled among the rafters. A thick beeswax candle on the altar behindAlfred guttered and smoked and a monk hurried to trim the wick. The flame grew again, its light reflected from a high golden reliquary that seemed to contain a withered hand.
    “Harald will want to defeat us.” Edward made his first tentative contribution to the discussion.
    “Why?” I asked, “when we’re doing our best to defeat ourselves?” There was an aggrieved murmur from the courtiers, but I overrode it. “Let me tell you what Harald will do, lord,” I said, speaking to Alfred. “He’ll take his army north of us and advance on Wintanceaster. There’s a lot of silver there, all conveniently piled in your new cathedral, and you’ve brought your army here so he won’t have much trouble breaking through Wintanceaster’s walls. And even if he does besiege us here,” I spoke even louder to drown Bishop Asser’s angry protest, “all he needs do is surround us and let us starve. How much food do we have here?”
    The king gestured to Asser, requesting that he stop spluttering. “So what would you do, Lord Uhtred?” Alfred asked, and there was a plaintive note in his voice. He was old and he was tired and he was ill, and Harald’s invasion seemed to threaten all that he had achieved.
    “I would suggest, lord,” I said, “that Lord Æthelred order his five hundred men to cross the Temes and march to Fearnhamme.”
    A hound whined in a corner of the church, but otherwise there was no sound. They all stared at me, but I saw some faces brighten. They had been wallowing with indecision and had needed the sword stroke of certainty.
    Alfred broke the silence. “Fearnhamme?” he asked cautiously.
    “Fearnhamme,” I repeated, watching Æthelred, but his pale face displayed no reaction, and no one else in the church made any comment.
    I had been thinking about the country to the north of Æscengum. War is not just about men, nor even about supplies, it is also about the hills and valleys, the rivers and marshes, the places where land and water will help defeat an enemy. I had traveled through Fearnhamme often enough on my journeys from Lundene to Wintanceaster, and wherever I traveled I noted how theland lay and how it might be used if an enemy was near. “There’s a hill just north of the river at Fearnhamme,” I said.
    “There is! I know it well,” one of the monks standing to Alfred’s right said, “it has an earthwork.”
    I looked at him, seeing a red-faced, hook-nosed man. “And who are you?” I asked coldly.
    “Oslac, lord,” he said, “the abbot here.”
    “The earthwork,” I asked him, “is it in good repair?”
    “It was dug by the ancient folk,” Abbot Oslac said, “and it’s much overgrown with grass, but the ditch is deep and the bank is still firm.”
    There were many such earthworks in Britain, mute witnesses to the warfare that had rolled across the land before we Saxons came to bring still more. “The bank’s high enough to