The Lords of the North. Bernard Cornwell

he admitted, ‘and if men know you travel with me then they will join us.’

      So I let him pay me, and my price was sixteen shillings, two mares and a black stallion, and the price of the last made Bolti go pale. A man had been leading the stallion about the streets, offering it for sale, and Bolti bought the animal because his fear of being trapped in Eoferwic was worth forty shillings. The black horse was battle trained, which meant he was not startled at loud noises and he moved obediently to the pressure of a knee, which left a man free to hold shield and sword and still manoeuvre. The stallion had been plundered from one of the Danes massacred in the last few days for no one knew his name. I called him Witnere, which means Tormentor, and it was apt for he took a dislike to the two mares and kept snapping at them.

      The mares were for Willibald and Hild. I told Father Willibald he should go south, but he was scared now and insisted on staying with me and so, the day after I had met Bolti, we all rode north along the Roman road. A dozen men came with us. Among them were three Danes and two Norsemen who had managed to hide from Hrothweard’s massacre, and the rest were Saxons who wanted to escape Ivarr’s revenge. All had weapons and Bolti gave me money to pay them. They did not get much in wages, just enough to buy food and ale, but their presence deterred any outlaws on the long road.

      I was tempted to ride to Synningthwait which was where Ragnar and his followers had their land, but I knew there would be very few men there, for most had gone south with Ragnar. Some of those warriors had died at Ethandun and the rest were still with Guthrum, whose defeated army had stayed in Mercia. Guthrum and Alfred had made peace, and Guthrum had even been baptised, which Willibald said was a miracle. So there would be few warriors at Synningthwait. No place to find refuge against my uncle’s murderous ambitions or Kjartan’s hate. So, with no real plan for my future and content to let fate work its will, I kept faith with Bolti and escorted him north towards Kjartan’s land which lay athwart our path like a dark cloud. To pass through that land meant paying a toll, and that toll would be steep, and only powerful men like Ivarr, whose warriors outnumbered Kjartan’s followers, could cross the River Wiire without payment. ‘You can afford it,’ I teased Bolti. His two sons each led packhorses that I suspected were loaded with coins wrapped in cloth or fleece to stop them clinking.

      ‘I can’t afford it if he takes my daughters,’ Bolti said. He had twin daughters who were twelve or thirteen, ripe for marriage. They were short, plump, fair-haired, snub-nosed and impossible to tell apart.

      ‘Is that what Kjartan does?’ I asked.

      ‘He takes what he wants,’ Bolti said sourly, ‘and he likes young girls, though I suspect he’d prefer to take you.’

      ‘And why do you suspect that?’ I asked him tonelessly.

      ‘I know the tales,’ he said. ‘His son lost his eye because of you.’

      ‘His son lost his eye,’ I said, ‘because he stripped Earl Ragnar’s daughter half naked.’

      ‘But he blames you.’

      ‘He does,’ I agreed. We had all been children then, but childhood injuries can fester and I did not doubt that Sven the One-Eyed would love to take both my eyes as revenge for his one.

      So as we neared Dunholm we turned west into the hills to avoid Kjartan’s men. It was summer, but a chill wind brought low clouds and a thin rain so that I was glad of my leather-lined mail coat. Hild had smeared the metal rings with lanolin squeezed out of newly-shorn fleeces, and it protected most of the metal from rust. She had put the grease on my helmet and sword-blades too.

      We climbed, following the well-worn track, and a couple of miles behind us another group followed, and there were fresh hoofprints in the damp earth betraying that others had passed this way not long before. Such heavy use of the path should have made me think. Kjartan the Cruel and Sven the One-Eyed lived off the dues that travellers paid them, and if a traveller did not pay then they were robbed, taken as slaves or killed. Kjartan and his son had to be aware that folk were trying to avoid them by using the hill paths, and I should have been more wary. Bolti was unafraid, for he simply trusted me. He told me tales of how Kjartan and Sven had become rich from slaves. ‘They take anyone, Dane or Saxon,’ he said, ‘and sell them over the water. If you’re lucky you can sometimes ransom a slave back, but the price will be high.’ He glanced at Father Willibald. ‘He kills all priests.’

      ‘He does?’

      ‘He hates all Christian priests. He reckons they’re sorcerers, so he half buries them and lets his dogs eat them.’

      ‘What did he say?’ Willibald asked me, pulling his mare aside before Witnere could savage her.

      ‘He said Kjartan will kill you if he captures you, father.’

      ‘Kill me?’

      ‘He’ll feed you to his hounds.’

      ‘Oh, dear God,’ Willibald said. He was unhappy, lost, far from home, and nervous of the strange northern landscape. Hild, on the other hand, seemed happier. She was nineteen years old, and filled with patience for life’s hardships. She had been born into a wealthy West Saxon family, not noble, but possessed of enough land to live well, but she had been the last of eight children and her father had promised her to the church’s service because her mother had nearly died when Hild was born, and he ascribed his wife’s survival to God’s benevolence. So, at eleven years old, Hild, whose proper name was Sister Hildegyth, had been sent to the nuns in Cippanhamm and there she had lived, shut away from the world, praying and spinning yarn, spinning and praying, until the Danes had come and she had been whored.

      She still whimpered in her sleep and I knew she was remembering her humiliations, but she was happy to be away from Wessex and away from the folk who constantly told her she should return to God’s service. Willibald had chided her for abandoning her holy life, but I had warned him that one more such comment would earn him a new and larger bellybutton and ever since he had kept quiet. Now Hild drank in every new sight with a child’s sense of wonder. Her pale face had taken on a golden glow to match her hair. She was a clever woman, not the cleverest I have known, but full of a shrewd wisdom. I have lived long now and have learned that some women are trouble, and some are easy companions, and Hild was among the easiest I ever knew. Perhaps that was because we were friends. We were lovers too, but never in love and she was assailed by guilt. She kept that to herself and to her prayers, but in the daylight she had begun to laugh again and to take pleasure from simple things, yet at times the darkness wrapped her and she would whimper and I would see her long fingers fidget with a crucifix and I knew she was feeling God’s claws raking across her soul.

      So we rode into the hills and I had been careless, and it was Hild who saw the horsemen first. There were nineteen of them, most in leather coats, but three in mail, and they were circling behind us, and I knew then that we were being shepherded. Our track followed the side of a hill and to our right was a steep drop to a rushing stream, and though we could escape into the dale we would inevitably be slower than the men who now joined the track behind us. They did not try to approach. They could see we were armed and they did not want a fight, they just wanted to make sure we kept plodding north to whatever fate awaited us. ‘Can’t you fight them off?’ Bolti demanded.

      ‘Thirteen against nineteen?’ I suggested. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘if the thirteen will fight, but they won’t.’ I gestured at the swordsmen Bolti was paying to accompany us. ‘They’re good enough to scare off bandits,’ I went on, ‘but they’re not stupid enough to fight Kjartan’s men. If I ask them to fight they’ll most likely join the enemy and share your daughters.’

      ‘But …’ he began, then fell silent for we could at last see what did await us. A slave fair was being held where the stream tumbled into a deeper dale and in that larger valley was a sizeable village built where a bridge, nothing more than a giant stone slab, crossed a wider stream that I took to be the Wiire. There was a crowd in the village and I saw those folk were being guarded by more men. The riders who were following us came a little closer, but stopped when I stopped. I gazed down the hill. The village was too far away to tell whether Kjartan or Sven were there, but it seemed safe to assume the men in the