The Flame Bearer (The Saxon Stories #10)

by Bernard Cornwell

“And I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” I told him, “and men call me by many names. The one I am most proud of is Uhtredærwe. It means Uhtred the Wicked.”

When a man cannot fight he should curse. The gods like to feel needed.

I was born a Saxon, but raised by Danes, my daughter had married a Norseman, my dearest friend was Irish, my woman was a Saxon, the mother of my children had been Danish, my gods were pagan, and my oath was sworn to Æthelflaed, a Christian. Whose side was I on?

Except we were there, and I was in a vengeful mood. My cousin was still in Bebbanburg. Æthelhelm was trying to destroy my daughter and her husband. Constantin had humiliated me by driving me from my ancestral land. I had not seen Eadith, my wife, in a month. So someone had to suffer.

“May God bless you all!” a shrill voice called loud enough to be heard above the wind’s howling and the crying of the gulls, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the other one, my blessing on you!”

Ieremias, the mad bishop who was no bishop at all and who might not even have been mad, was my tenant, paying rent to the lord of Dunholm.

His real name was Dagfinnr Gundarson, but Jarl Dagfinnr the Dane had turned himself into Bishop Ieremias of Gyruum, and today, as his dirty-looking ship was berthed alongside the pristine Ælfswon, he appeared in the bright robes of a bishop and carrying a crozier; a bishop’s staff that was nothing more than a shepherd’s crook, though Ieremias’s crozier had a hook of

Besides, as I have never tired of telling my Christian followers, we pagans rarely persecute Christians. We believe there are many gods, so we accept another man’s religion as his own affair, while Christians, who perversely insist that there is only one god, think it their duty to kill, maim, enslave, or revile anyone who disagrees. They tell me this is for our own good.

We do not fear. We strut. We go to battle like heroes. We stink of shit. But we endure the horror because we must protect our women, keep our children from slavery, and guard our homes. So the screaming will never end, not till time itself ends.

And what did I expect? I touched the hammer at my neck and then the cross on Serpent-Breath’s pommel. I expected to be the Lord of Bebbanburg by nightfall. Or dead.

And what did my cousin’s men see? They saw confident warriors. By now they knew we were the dreaded enemy, the threat that had loomed over Bebbanburg for so many years. They saw warriors who came to the fight eagerly, and they knew what my men had achieved across the years. In all Britain there were few bands of warriors as experienced as my men, who had a reputation as feral as my men, who were feared as much as my men. I sometimes called them my wolf pack, and the defenders who waited in the alleys feared they were about to be ripped apart with the savagery of wolves. Yet in one way those fearful men were wrong. We were not confident, we were desperate. My men knew as well as I did that speed would be everything this day. The fight must be finished quickly or we would be overwhelmed by enemies, who, at this moment, were still too confused to understand what was happening. We would live if we were fast and die if we were slow, and so my men charged with an eagerness that looked like confidence.

I tell my grandchildren that confidence wins battles. I do not wish them to fight, I would rather make Ieremias’s world a reality and so live in harmony, but there is always some man, and it is usually a man, who looks with envy on our fields, who wants our home, who thinks his rancid god is better than ours, who will come with flame and sword and steel to take what we have built and make it his, and if we are not ready to fight, if we have not spent those tedious hours learning the craft of sword and shield and spear and seax, then that man will win and we will die.

We were the wolf pack of Bebbanburg and we had taken back what Ida the Flamebearer had first won.