Bernard Cornwell - The Lords Of The North

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The Lords Of The North

Bernard Cornwell

The year is 878 and Wessex is free from the Vikings. Uhtred, the dispossessed

son of a Northumbrian lord, helped Alfred win that victory, but now, as The

Lords of the North begins, he is disgusted by Alfred's lack of generosity and

repelled by the king's insistent piety. He flees Wessex, going back north to

seek revenge for the killing of his foster father and to rescue his

stepsister, captured in the same raid. He needs to find his old enemy,

Kjartan, a renegade Danish lord who lurks in the formidable stronghold of

Dunholm.

Uhtred arrives in the north to discover rebellion, chaos and fear. His only

ally is Hild, a West Saxon nun fleeing her calling, and his best hope is his

sword, with which he has made a formidable reputation as a warrior. He will

need the assistance of other warriors if he is to attack Dunholm and he finds

Guthred, a slave who believes he is a king.

If Guthred is to rule Northumbria he needs Uhtred and Ragnar, the Dane who is

Uhtred's sworn brother. Guthred, though, is weak and yields to treachery.

Uhtred ends up on a slave voyage to Iceland. His rescue comes through an

unlikely alliance of his friends and enemies. In the end it is Alfred the

Great of Wessex who sees profit in Northumbria's despair and looses Uhtred and

Ragnar onto Dunholm, the invincible fortress on its great spur of rock in the

lawless north.

The Lords of the North, like Bernard Cornwell's two previous novels in this

tale of England's making, is based on real events. It is a powerful story of

betrayal, romance and struggle, set in an England of turmoil, upheaval and

glory. Uhtred, a Northumbrian raised as a Viking, a man without lands, a

warrior without a country, has become a splendid, heroic figure.

3 0003 01772 0861

PLACE NAMES

The spelling of place names in Anglo Saxon England was an uncertain business,

with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London

was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic,

Lundenceaster and Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions

of the names listed below, but I have usually employed whichever spelling is

cited in either the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names or the Cambridge

Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years nearest or contained within

Alfred's reign, 871-899

AD, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was

written as both Heilincigae and Haeglingaiggae. Nor have I been consistent

myself; I should spell England as Englaland, and have preferred the modern

form Northumbria to Nordhymbralond to avoid the suggestion that the boundaries

of the ancient kingdom coincide with those of the modern county. So this list,

like the spellings themselves, is capricious.

Athelney, Somerset Alclyt Bishop Auckland, County Durham

Badum (pronounced Bathum) Bath, Avon

Bebbanburg Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland

Berrocscire Berkshire

Cair Ligualid Carlisle, Cumbria

Cetreht Catterick, Yorkshire

Cippanhamm Chippenham, Wiltshire

Contwaraburg Canterbury, Kent

Cumbraland Cumbria

Cuncacester Chester-le-Street, County Durham

Cynuit Cynuit Hillfort, nr Cannington,

Somerset

Defnascir Devonshire

Dornwaraceaster Dorchester, Dorset

Dunholm Durham, County Durham

Dyflin Dublin, Eire

Eoferwic York

Ethandun Edington, Wiltshire

Exanceaster Exeter, Devon

Fifhidan Fyfield, Wiltshire

Gleawecestre Gloucester, Gloucestershire

Gyruum Jarrow, County Durham

Hamptonscir Hampshire

Haithabu Hedeby, trading town in southern

Denmark

Heagostealdes Hexham, Northumberland

Hedene River Eden, Cumbria

Hocchale Houghall, County Durham

Horn Hofn, Iceland

Hreapandune Repton, Derbyshire

Kenet River Kennet

Lindisfarena Lindisfarne (Holy Island),

Northumberland

Lundene London

Onhripum Ripon, Yorkshire

Pedredan River Parrett

Readingum Reading, Berkshire

Scireburnan Sherborne, Dorset

Snotengaham Nottingham, Nottinghamshire

Strath Clota Strathclyde

Sumorsaete Somerset

Suth Seaxa Sussex (South Saxons)

Synningthwait Swinithwaite, Yorkshire

Temes River Thames

Thornsaeta Dorset

Thresk Thirsk, Yorkshire

Tine River Tyne

River Tweed

Wiire River Wear

yiltun Wilton, Wiltshire

Wiltunscir Wiltshire

Wintanceaster Winchester, Hampshire

THE LORDS OF THE NORTH

BERNARD CORNWELL

HarperCollinsPublishers

By the same Author

The SHARPE novels (in chronological order)

sharpe's tiger

sharpe's triumph

sharpe's fortress

sharpe's trafalgar

sharpe's prey

sharpe's rifles

sharpe's havoc

sharpe's eagle

sharpe's gold

sharpe's escape

sharpe's battle

sharpe's company

sharpe's sword

sharpe's enemy

sharpe's honour

sharpe's regiment

sharpe's siege

sharpe's revenge

sharpe's waterloo

sharpe's devil

The GRAIL QUEST Series

HARLEQUIN

VAGABOND

HERETIC

gallows thief

stonehenge: a novel of 2000 bc

The STARBUCK Chronicles

REBEL

COPPERHEAD

BATTLE FLAG

THE BLOODY GROUND

The WARLORD Chronicles

THE WINTER KING

THE ENEMY OF GOD

EXCALIBUR

THE LAST KINGDOM

THE PALE HORSEMAN

For Ed Breslin

77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of

this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13 978 0 00 721968 1 ISBN-10 0 00 721968 7

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

Set in Meridien by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publishers.

.....Com on wanre niht scridan sceadugenga

From out of the wan night slides the shadow walker

Beowulf

Part One

The Slave King

I wanted darkness. There was a half-moon that summer night and it kept sliding

from behind the clouds to make me nervous. I wanted darkness.

I had carried two leather bags to the small ridge which marked the northern

boundary of my estate. My estate. Fifhaden, it was called, and it was King

Alfred's reward for the service I had done him at Ethandun where, on the long

green hill, we had destroyed a Danish army. It had been shield wall against

shield wall, and at its end Alfred was king again and the Danes were beaten,

and Wessex lived, and I dare say that I had done more than most men. My woman

had died, my friend had died, I had taken a spear thrust in my right thigh,

and my reward was Fifhaden.

Five hides. That was what the name meant. Five hides! Scarce enough land to

support the four families of slaves who tilled the soil and sheared the sheep

and trapped fish in the River Kenet. Other men had been given great estates

and the church had been rewarded with rich woodlands and deep pastures, while

I had been given five hides. I hated Alfred. He was a miserable, pious,

tight-fisted king who distrusted me because I was no Christian, because I was

a northerner, and because I had given him his kingdom back at Ethandun. And as

reward he had given me Fifhaden. Bastard.

So I had carried the two bags to the low ridge that had been cropped by sheep

and was littered with enormous grey boulders that glowed white when the moon

escaped the wispy clouds. I crouched by one of the vast stones and Hild knelt

beside me.

She was my woman then. She had been a nun in Cippanhamm, but the Danes had

captured the town and they had whored her. Now she was with me. Sometimes, in

the night, I would hear her praying and her prayers were all tears and

despair, and I reckoned she would go back to her god in the end, but for the

moment I was her refuge. 'Why are we waiting?' she asked.

I touched a finger to my lips to silence her. She watched me. She had a long

face, large eyes and golden hair under a scrap of scarf. I reckoned she was

wasted as a nun. Alfred, of course, wanted her back in the nunnery. That was

why I let her stay. To annoy him. Bastard.

I was waiting to make certain that no one watched us. It was unlikely, for

folk do not like to venture into the night when things of horror stalk the

earth. Hild clutched at her crucifix, but I was comfortable in the dark. From

the time I was a small child I had taught myself to love the night. I was a

sceadugengan, a shadow-walker, one of the creatures other men feared.

I waited a long time until I was certain no one else was on the low ridge,

then I drew Wasp-Sting, my short-sword, and I cut out a square of turf that I

laid to one side. Then I dug into the ground, piling the soil onto my cloak.

The blade kept striking chalk and flints and I knew Wasp-Sting's blade would

be chipped, but I went on digging until I had made a hole large enough for a

child's burial. We put the two bags into the earth. They were my hoard. My

silver and gold, my wealth, and I did not wish to be burdened with it. I

possessed five hides, two swords, a mail coat, a shield, a helmet, a horse and

a thin nun, but I had no men to protect a hoard and so I had to hide it

instead. I kept only a few silver coins and the rest I put into the ground's

keeping, and we covered the hoard over and stamped the soil down and then

replaced the turf. I waited for the moon to sail out from behind a cloud and

then I looked at the turf and reckoned no one would know it had been

disturbed, and I memorised the place, marking it in my mind by the nearby

boulders. One day, when I had the means to protect that treasure, I would

return for it. Hild stared at the hoard's grave. 'Alfred says you must stay

here,' she said.

'Alfred can piss down his own throat,' I said, 'and I hope the bastard chokes

on it and dies.' He would probably die soon enough for he was a sick man. He

was only twenty-nine, eight years older than I was, yet he looked closer to

fifty and I doubt any of us would have given him more than two or three years

to live. He was forever griping about his belly pains or running to the

shithole or shivering

in a fever.

Hild touched the turf where the hoard was buried. 'Does this mean we're coming

back to Wessex?' she asked.

'It means,' I said, 'that no man travels among enemies with his hoard. It's

safer here, and if we survive, we'll fetch it. And if I die, you fetch it.'

She said nothing, and we carried the earth that was left on the cloak back to

the river and threw it into the water.

In the morning we took our horses and rode eastwards. We were going to

Lundene, for in Lundene all roads start. It was fate that drove me. It was the

year 878, I was twenty-one years old and believed my swords could win me the

whole world. I was Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the man who had killed Ubba

Lothbrokson beside the sea and who had spilled Svein of the White Horse from

his saddle at Ethandun. I was the man who had given Alfred his kingdom back

and I hated him. So I would leave him. My path was the sword-path, and it

would take me home. I would go north.

Lundene is the greatest city in all the island of Britain and I have always

loved its ruined houses and feverish alleys, but Hild and I stayed there only

two days, lodging in a Saxon tavern in the new town west of the decaying Roman

walls. The place was a part of Mercia then and was garrisoned by the Danes.

The alehouses were full of traders and foreigners and shipmasters, and it was

a merchant called Thorkild who offered us passage to Northumbria. I told him

my name was Ragnarson and he neither believed me nor questioned me and he gave

us passage in return for two silver coins and my muscle on one of his oars. I

was a Saxon, but I had been

raised by the Danes so I spoke their tongue and Thorkild assumed I was Danish.

My fine helmet, mail coat and two swords told him I was a warrior and he must

have suspected I was a fugitive from the defeated army, but what did he care?

He needed oarsmen. Some traders used only slaves at their oars, but Thorkild

reckoned they were trouble and employed free men.

We left on the ebb-tide, our hull filled with bolts of linen, oil from

Frankia, beaver-pelts, scores of fine saddles and leather sacks filled with

precious cumin and mustard. Once away from the city and in the estuary of the

Temes we were in East Anglia, but we saw little of that kingdom for on our

first night a pernicious fog rolled in from the sea and it stayed for days.

Some mornings we could not travel at all, and even when the weather was half

good we never went far from shore. I had thought to sail home because it would

be quicker than travelling by road, but instead we crept mile by foggy mile

through a tangle of mudbanks, creeks and treacherous currents. We stopped

every night, finding some place to anchor or tie up, and spent a whole week in

some godforsaken East Anglian marsh because a bowstrake sprang loose and the

water could not be bailed fast enough, and so we were forced to haul the ship

onto a muddy beach and make repairs. By the time the hull was caulked the

weather had changed and the sun sparkled on a fogless sea and we rowed

northwards, still stopping every night. We saw a dozen other ships, all longer

and narrower than Thorkild's craft. They were Danish warships and all were

travelling northwards. I assumed they were fugitives from Guthrum's defeated

army and they were going home to Denmark or perhaps to Frisia or wherever

there was easier plunder to be had than in Alfred's Wessex.

Thorkild was a tall, lugubrious man who thought he was thirty-five years old.

He plaited his greying hair so that it hung in long ropes to his waist, and

his arms were bare of the rings that showed a warrior's prowess. 'I was never

a fighter,' he confessed to me. 'I was raised as a trader and I've always been

a trader and my son will trade when I'm dead.'

'You live in Eoferwic?' I asked.

'Lundene. But I keep a storehouse in Eoferwic. It's a good place to buy

fleeces.'

'Does Ricsig still rule there?' I asked.

He shook his head. 'Ricsig's been dead two years now. There's a man called

Egbert on the throne now.'

'There was a King Egbert in Eoferwic when I was a child.'

'This is his son, or his grandson? Maybe his cousin? He's a Saxon, anyway.'

'So who really rules in Northumbria?'

'We do, of course,' he said, meaning the Danes. The Danes often put a tamed

Saxon on the thrones of the countries they captured, and Egbert, whoever he

was, was doubtless just such a leashed monarch. He gave a pretence of legality

to the Danish occupiers, but the real ruler was Earl Ivarr, the Dane who owned

most of the land about the city. 'He's Ivarr Ivarson,' Thorkild told me with a

touch of pride in his voice, 'and his father was Ivar Lothbrokson.'

'I knew Ivar Lothbrokson,' I said.

I doubt Thorkild believed me, but it was true. Ivar Lothbrokson had been a

fearsome warlord, thin and skeletal, savage and ghastly, but he had been a

friend to Earl Ragnar who raised me. His brother had been Ubba, the man I had

killed by the sea. 'Ivarr is the real power in Northumbria,' Thorkild told me,

'but not in the valley of the River Wiire. Kjartan rules there.' Thorkild

touched his hammer amulet when he spoke Kjartan's name. 'He's called Kjartan

the Cruel now,' he said, 'and his son is worse.'

'Sven.' I said the name sourly. I knew Kjartan and Sven. They were my enemies.

'Sven the One-Eyed,' Thorkild said with a grimace and again touched his amulet

as if to fend off the evil of the names he had just spoken. 'And north of

them,' he went on, 'the ruler is Ælfric of Bebbanburg.'

I knew him too. Ælfric of Bebbanburg was my uncle and thief of my land, but I

pretended not to know the name. 'Ælfric?' I asked, 'another Saxon?'

'A Saxon,' Thorkild confirmed, 'but his fortress is too powerful for us,' he

added by way of explanation why a Saxon lord was

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摘要：

TheLordsOfTheNorthByBernardCornwellTheyearis878andWessexisfreefromtheVikings.Uhtred,thedispossessedsonofaNorthumbrianlord,helpedAlfredwinthatvictory,butnow,asTheLordsoftheNorthbegins,heisdisgustedbyAlfred'slackofgenerosityandrepelledbytheking'sinsistentpiety.HefleesWessex,goingbacknorthtoseekrevenge...

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Bernard Cornwell - The Lords Of The North

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