Free The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

his neck. Ragnar curbed his horse and, in a gesture that showed his utter contempt, he tossed down the sword that I had carried back from the clearing where Sven had tied Thyra. By rights the sword belonged to Ragnar now, and it was a valuable weapon with silver wire wrapped around its hilt, but he tossed the blade at Kjartan’s feet as though it were nothing more than a hay knife. “Your son left that on my land,” he said, “and I would have words with him.”
    “My son is a good boy,” Kjartan said stoutly, “and in time he will serve at your oars and fight in your shield wall.”
    “He has offended me.”
    “He meant no harm, lord.”
    “He has offended me,” Ragnar repeated harshly. “He looked on my daughter’s nakedness and showed her his own.”
    “And he was punished for it,” Kjartan said, giving me a malevolent glance. “Blood was shed.”
    Ragnar made an abrupt gesture and the hazel branches were dropped to the ground. That was evidently Ragnar’s answer, which made no sense to me, but Kjartan understood, as did Rorik who leaned over and whispered to me, “That means he must fight for Sven now.”
    “Fight for him?”
    “They mark a square on the ground with the branches and they fight inside the square.”
    Yet no one moved to arrange the hazel branches into a square. Instead Kjartan walked back to his house and summoned Sven who came limping from under the low lintel, his right leg bandaged. He looked sullen and terrified, and no wonder, for Ragnar and his horsemen were in their war glory, shining warriors, sword Danes.
    “Say what you have to say,” Kjartan said to his son.
    Sven looked up at Ragnar. “I am sorry,” he mumbled.
    “I can’t hear you,” Ragnar snarled.
    “I am sorry, lord,” Sven said, shaking with fear.
    “Sorry for what?” Ragnar demanded.
    “For what I did.”
    “And what did you do?”
    Sven found no answer, or none that he cared to make, and instead he shuffled his feet and looked down at the ground. Cloud shadows raced across the far moor, and two ravens beat up to the head of the valley.
    “You laid hands on my daughter,” Ragnar said, “and you tied her to a tree, and you stripped her naked.”
    “Half naked,” Sven muttered, and for his pains took a thump on the head from his father.
    “A game,” Kjartan appealed to Ragnar, “just a game, lord.”
    “No boy plays such games with my daughter,” Ragnar said. I had rarely seen him angry, but he was angry now, grim and hard, no trace of the bighearted man who could make a hall echo with laughter. He dismounted and drew his sword, his battle blade called Heart-Breaker, and he held the tip toward Kjartan. “Well?” he asked. “Do you dispute my right?”
    “No, lord,” Kjartan said, “but he is a good boy, strong and a hard worker, and he will serve you well.”
    “And he has seen things he should not see,” Ragnar said, and he tossed Heart-Breaker into the air so that her long blade turned in the sun and he caught her by the hilt as she dropped, but now he was holding her backward, as if she were a dagger rather than a sword. “Uhtred!” Ragnar called, making me jump. “He says she was only half naked. Is that true?”
    “Yes, lord.”
    “Then only half a punishment,” Ragnar said, and he drove the sword forward, hilt first, straight into Sven’s face. The hilts of our swords are heavy, sometimes decorated with precious things, but however pretty they appear, the hilts are still brutal lumps of metal, and Heart-Breaker’s hilt, banded with silver, crushed Sven’s right eye. Crushed it to jelly, blinding it instantly, and Ragnar spat at him then slid his blade back into its fleece-lined scabbard.
    Sven was crouching, whimpering, his hands clasped over his ruined eye.
    “It is over,” Ragnar said to Kjartan.
    Kjartan hesitated. He was angry, shamed, and unhappy, but he could not win a trial of strength with Earl Ragnar and so, at last, he nodded. “It is over,” he agreed.
    “And