The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

it comes to war . . .' I paused, not sure what to say. There was

no point in promising to do my best to rescue Ragnar, for if war came then the hostages would

be slaughtered long before I could reach them.
    ‘If it comes to war?' Wulfhere prompted me.
    'If it comes to war,' I said, repeating the words he had spoken to me before my penance,

'we'll all be looking for a way to stay alive.'
    Wulfhere stared at me for a long time and his silence told me that though I had failed to

find a message for Ragnar I had given a message to Wulfhere. He drank ale. 'So the bitch

speaks English, does she?'
    'She's a Saxon.'
    As was I, but I hated Alfred and I would join Ragnar when I could, if I could, whatever

Mildrith wanted, or so I thought. But deep under the earth, where the corpse serpent gnaws at

the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, there are three spinners. Three women who make our

fate. We might believe we make choices, but in truth our lives are in the spinners' fingers.

They make our lives, and destiny is everything. The Danes know that, and even the Christians

know it, Wyrd bid ful arid, we Saxons say, fate is inexorable, and the spinners had decided

my fate because, a week after the Witan had met, when Exanceaster was quiet again, they

sent me a ship.
    The first 1 knew of it was when a slave came running from Oxton's fields saying that there

was a Danish ship in the estuary of the Uisc and I pulled on boots and mail, snatched my

swords from their peg, shouted for a horse to be saddled and rode to the foreshore where

Heahengel rotted.
    And where, standing in from the long sandspit that protects the Uisc from the greater sea,

another ship approached. Her sail was furled on the long yard and her dripping oars rose and

fell like wings and her long hull left a spreading wake that glittered silver under the

rising sun. Her prow was high, and standing there was a man in full mail, a man with a helmet

and spear, and behind me, where a few fisherfolk lived in hovels beside the mud, people

were hurrying towards the hills and taking with them whatever few possessions they could

snatch. I called to one of them. 'It's not a Dane!'
    'It's a West Saxon ship,' I called, though they did not believe me and hurried away with

their livestock. For years they had done this. They would see a ship and they would run, for

ships brought Danes and Danes brought death, but this ship had no dragon or wolf or eagle's

head on its prow. I knew the ship. It was the Eftwyrd, the best named of all Alfred's ships

which otherwise bore pious names like Heahengel or Apostol or Cristenlic. Eftwyrd meant

judgement day which, though Christian in inspiration, accurately described what she had

brought to many Danes.
    The man in the prow waved and, for the first time since I had crawled on my knees to Alfred's

altar, my spirits lifted. It was Leofric, and then the Eftwyrd's bows slid onto the mud and

the long hull juddered to a halt. Leofric cupped his hands. 'How deep is this mud?'
    'It's nothing!' I shouted back, 'a hand's depth, no more!'
    'Can I walk on it?'
    'Of course you can!' 1 shouted back.
    He jumped and, as I had known he would, sank up to his thighs in the thick black slime, and I

bent over my saddle's pommel in laughter, and the Eftwyrd's crew laughed with me as Leofric

cursed, and it took ten minutes to extricate him from the muck, by which time a score of us

were plastered in the stinking stuff, but then the crew, who were mostly my old oarsmen and

warriors, brought ale ashore, and bread and salted pork, and we made a midday meal beside the

rising tide.
    'You're an earsling,' Leofric grumbled, looking at the mud clogging up the links of his

mail coat.
    'I'm a bored earsling,' I said.
    'You're bored?' Leofric said, 'so are we.' It seemed the fleet was not sailing. It had been

gives into the charge of a man named Burgweard who was a dull, worthy soldier whose brother

was bishop of