Sword Song (The Saxon Stories, #4)

by Bernard Cornwell

I am Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, and in those days I was a lord of war.

I remember the anticipation. I touched Serpent-Breath again and it seemed to me that she quivered. I sometimes thought that blade sang. It was a thin, half-heard song, a keening noise, the song of the blade wanting blood; the sword song.

You never, ever, tell others of your crimes, not unless they are so big as to be incapable of concealment, and then you describe them as policy or statecraft.

“Tell the Lord Uhtred,” he commanded Bjorn, “what the Norns told you.” The Norns are the Fates, the three women who spin life’s threads at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life. Whenever a child is born they start a new thread, and they know where it will go, with what other threads it will weave, and how it will end. They know everything. They sit and they spin and they laugh at us, and sometimes they shower us with good fortune and sometimes they doom us to hurt and to tears.

“You are to be king, Lord Uhtred,” Bjorn said, then gave a long moan like a creature in pain. “You are to be king,” he sobbed. The wind was cold. A spit of rain touched my cheek. I said nothing. “King of Mercia,” Bjorn said in a sudden and surprisingly loud voice. “You are to be king of Saxon and of Dane, enemy of the Welsh, king between the rivers and lord of all you rule. You are to be mighty, Lord Uhtred, for the three spinners love you.” He stared at me and, though the fate he pronounced was golden, there was a malevolence in his dead eyes. “You will be king,” he said, and the last word sounded like poison on his tongue.

Fate is inexorable. Fate cannot be changed. Fate rules us. Our lives are made before we live them, and I was to be King of Mercia.

“That you will be king,” Bjorn said, “and you will be the king of other kings. You will be lord of the land between the rivers and the scourge of your enemies. You will be king.”

So it would be Sigefrid of Wessex, Uhtred of Mercia, and Haesten in East Anglia. Three weasels in a sack, I thought, but did not let the thought show.

Yet I was sworn to Alfred. I was sworn to defend Wessex. I had given Alfred my oath and without oaths we are no better than beasts. But the Norns had spoken. Fate is inexorable, it cannot be cheated. That thread of my life was already in place, and I could no more change it than I could make the sun go backward. The Norns had sent a messenger across the black gulf to tell me that my oath must be broken, and that I would be a king, and so I nodded to Haesten. “So be it,” I said.

If your fields are heavy and damp with clay then you can harness two oxen to an ard blade, and you can goad the beasts bloody so that the blade plows your ground. The beasts must pull together, which is why they are yoked together, and in life one ox is called Fate and the other is named Oaths. Fate decrees what we do. We cannot escape fate. Wyrd bi? ful ãræd. We have no choices in life, how can we? Because from the moment we are born the three sisters know where our thread will go and what patterns it will weave and how it will end. Wyrd bi? ful ãræd.

Pyrlig and I had stood in the shield wall together. We had fought side by side. We were Welshman and Saxon, Christian and pagan, and we should have been enemies, but I loved him like a brother. So I gave him my sword and, instead of watching him nailed to a cross, I gave him the chance to fight for his life.

“Your mother’s pregnant,” I told the happily squealing child. “And it’s all your father’s fault,” Gisela added sternly. We were so happy.

Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life.

Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.

perhaps love is friendship more than it is lust, though the gods know the lust is always there.

Gisela and I had gained that contentment, as Alfred did with Ælswith, though I think our voyage was happier because our boat danced on sunlit seas and was driven by a brisk warm wind.