Sword of Kings (The Saxon Stories, #12)

by Bernard Cornwell

“You would die for a stupid oath?” Eadith had been angry too. “Is that what you want?” I wanted to live, but I wanted to live without the stain of dishonor that marked an oathbreaker.

a small fleet had come to my waters and was levying a duty in my name, and I suspected I knew where that fleet had come from. And if I was right, then the four ships had come from the south, from the lands of Edward, Anglorum Saxonum Rex

I had not killed him. I had taken him prisoner when he fought against me, then treated him with the honor that his rank deserved. But then he had caught a sweating sickness,

he had died. His son, Æthelhelm the Younger, spread the lie that I had killed his father, and he swore to take revenge. He swore a bloodfeud against me.

Yet Ælfweard was not Edward’s eldest son, that was Æthelstan, and Æthelstan was also my friend. So why was Æthelstan not the ætheling? Because Æthelhelm spread the rumor, a false rumor, that Æthelstan was a bastard, that Edward had never married his mother. So Æthelstan was exiled to Mercia, where I had met him and where I came to admire the boy. He grew into a warrior, a man of justice, and the only fault I could find in him was his passionate adherence to his Christian god.

And so Æthelstan had asked me to swear an oath. That on King Edward’s death I would kill Æthelhelm and so destroy his power over the nobles who must meet in the Witan to confirm the new king.

So one day, I knew, Northumbria would fall, and it was likely, in my judgment, to fall to the Saxons. I did not want that, but to fight against it was to draw a sword against fate, and if that fate was inevitable, and I believed it was, then it was better that Æthelstan should inherit Wessex.

We might be born to wealth, to land, to success, and I had been given all those things, but when we die we go to the afterlife with nothing except reputation, and a man without honor has no reputation. I would keep my oath.

So Æthelhelm’s men had reached this part of Cent before us. “What do we do?” Gerbruht asked. “What do you think we do?” Finan snarled. “We kill the buggers.” Because when queens call for help, warriors go to war.

“We’re going back into this rain. Thirty of us. You want to stay and guard Spearhafoc?” “I want to watch what you’re doing. I like watching crazy people.”

alleys are harder to explore unseen than woodlands and hedgerows,

So my foolish dreams had ended. Here, in the damp grass behind a thorn hedge, reality had smacked me. The town was crammed with the enemy, we had come too late, and I had failed. “You were right,” I told Finan ruefully. “I’m Irish, lord, of course I was right.”

My father had once told me to make few oaths. “Oaths will bind you, boy,” he had said, “and you’re a fool. You were born a fool. You jump before you think. So think before you swear an oath.”

My husband,” she said those last two words with venom in her tone, “has made the decision. It is in his will. Ælfweard, horrible boy, will be King of Wessex and of East Anglia, and Æthelstan will be King of Mercia. It is decided.” I just stared at her, scarce believing what I had heard. “They are half-brothers,” Eadgifu went on, “and they each get what they want, so there will be no war.” And still I stared. Edward was dividing his kingdom? That was madness. His father’s dream had been to make one kingdom out of four, and Edward had brought that dream so close to reality, yet now he would take an axe to it? And he believed that would bring peace?

“Where was King Æthelstan when his father died?” I asked instead. Halldor bridled at my calling Æthelstan a king, but managed to suppress his indignation. “I believe that Faeger Cnapa was still in Ceaster,” he said coldly, “or maybe in Gleawecestre.” “Faeger Cnapa?” I asked. He had said it as a name, but it means “pretty boy.” Faege, though, also means “doomed.” Whatever he meant it was plainly an insult. Halldor looked at me coldly. “Men call him that.” “Why?” “Because he’s handsome?” Halldor suggested.

Eu hein

“There’s only one cure for seasickness, father!” Gerbruht bellowed from the stern. “Sit under a tree!”

Awyrgan

Peguete da safada da Eadgifu. Bem feito por Edward morrer corno.

“I took an oath to protect you!” he interrupted me. “You? I never asked any oath of you!” “You didn’t,” he agreed, “but I still swore an oath to protect you.” “When?” I asked. “I don’t remember any such oath.” “I took it two heartbeats ago,” he said, “and if you can be tied by a stupid oath, so can I.” “I release you from any oath—” Again he interrupted me. “Someone has to keep you alive. Seems God gave me the task of keeping you away from barley fields.” I touched the hammer and tried to convince myself that I was making the right decision. “There are no barley fields in Lundene,” I told Finan. “That’s true.” “Then we shall live, my friend,” I said, touching him on the shoulder, “we shall live and we’ll go home.”

Finan só não é mais fofo porque tem Osferth em algum lugar na Mercia.

“You have to surrender your weapons,” he demanded. “Is there a king here?” The question seemed to confuse him. “No,” he managed to say. “No, lord,” I snarled. “No, lord.” “Then it isn’t a king’s hall tonight, is it? We keep our weapons. Open the doors.”

East Anglia had fallen to the Danes before Alfred had come to the throne and had long been ruled by Danish kings. Their sovereignty ended when Edward’s West Saxon army defeated them and, though many had died in the fighting, the Danes who survived had known which way fate’s wind was blowing and so had converted to Christianity.

“If any man offends her I will threaten him with the eternal furnaces of hell and the endless torments of Satan.” I had been raised with those threats hanging over me and, despite my belief in the older gods, I still felt a shiver of fear. I touched the hammer.

He was right, of course. I did not doubt that Gunnald deserved death for a multitude of crimes, but what I had just unleashed in the slaver’s attic was cruel. I had condemned him to a long, terrible, and painful death. I could have satisfied justice with a swift killing, as swift as the one I had given Halfdan so many years before, but I had chosen cruelty instead. Why? Because I knew that choice would please Benedetta. Another scream sounded, faded, grew again. “It is not seemly,” Father Oda repeated, “that you have put that woman’s mortal soul at risk!” He spoke fervently and I wondered if the Danish priest was attracted to Benedetta and that thought gave me a pulse of jealousy. She was beautiful, undeniably beautiful, but there was a darkness in that beauty and an anger in her soul. I told myself she was ridding herself of that shadow with Wasp-Sting.

“A poet, boy. A weaver of dreams, a man who makes glory from nothing and dazzles you with its making.” “What use is a poet?” I had asked. “None at all, boy, none at all! Poets are quite useless! But when the world ends folk will remember our songs, and in Valhalla they will sing those songs and so the middle-earth’s glory will not die.”

now, in the moonlit barn, I clung to those few words spoken so long ago and dreamed of Gisela waiting in some sunlit hall to welcome me. I tried again to summon her face, her smile. I saw her in my dreams sometimes, but never when I was awake.

Everything ends. Summer ends. Happiness ends. Days of joy are followed by days of sorrow. Even the gods will meet their end in the last battle of Ragnarok when all the evil of the world brings chaos and the sun will turn dark, the black waters will drown the homes of men, and the great beamed hall of Valhalla will burn to ashes. Everything ends.

For all my adult life I had watched Wessex grow stronger, defeating the Danes, subduing Mercia, and conquering East Anglia, and all in pursuit of King Alfred’s dream that there should be one country for all the folk who spoke Ænglisc, the language of the Saxons.

Better, I thought, to let Æthelstan and Ælfweard fight it out, to let them weaken each other. And all that was true, except I had given my oath and I had lost my sword. Sometimes we do not know why we do the things we do, we are driven to it by fate, by impulse, or by mere stupidity.

The great Lord Uhtred! I felt a vast weight on my heart when I heard those words. Reputation! We seek it, we prize it, and then it turns on us like a cornered wolf. What did Rumwald expect? A miracle? We were three hundred in a city of three thousand, and the great Lord Uhtred had a battered body and a fearful heart. Yes, we might open a gate, and we might even hold it long enough to let Æthelstan’s men into the city, but what then? We would still be outnumbered. “It’s an honor to fight beside you,” I told Rumwald, merely saying what he would like to hear, “and we need a horse.”

It would be a battle, I thought bitterly, to decide which royal arse would warm a throne, and what business did I have deciding the throne of Wessex? Yet fate, that callous bitch, had tied my life’s threads to King Alfred’s dream. Was there really a Christian heaven? If there was then King Alfred would be gazing down on us even now. And what would he want? Of that I had no doubt. He wanted a Christian country of all the men who spoke the Ænglisc tongue, and he wanted that country led by a Christian king. He would be praying for Æthelstan. So damn him, I thought, damn Alfred and his piety, damn his stern face, always so disapproving, damn his righteousness, and damn him for making me fight for his cause a lifetime after his death. Because today, I thought, if Æthelstan did not come, I would die for Alfred’s dream.

In all my years I had never fought anywhere except the front rank. A man who leads others to death’s doorway must lead, not follow.

Then he drew his sword. He drew Serpent-Breath. He drew my sword, the whorls on her steel blade reflecting a lance of sunlight to dazzle me. He spat toward us a second time, then turned and swept Serpent-Breath up in a salute to Ælfweard.

then Æthelstan’s horsemen split the enemy shield wall and the West Saxons broke in panic. Because a king had come and a king now fled.

“They are my nephews.”

Half brothers