Free The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) by Bernard Cornwell

robe, had greasy white hair hanging to his waist, and a sly look of amusement on his thin, clever face. He had laid fifteen silver shillings on the grass, then hitched up his robe. ‘Behold,’ he announced grandly, then pissed on the coins. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the other one,’ he said as he pissed, then grinned at me. ‘Your rent, lord, a little damp, but blessed by God Himself. See how they sparkle now? A miracle, yes?’
    ‘Wash them,’ I told him.
    ‘And your feet too, lord?’
    So the crazy Ieremias wanted to build on Lindisfarena? ‘Did he ask my cousin’s permission?’ I asked Olla.
    ‘I wouldn’t know, lord. I haven’t seen Ieremias or his horrible ship for months.’
    The horrible ship was called Guds Moder , a dark, untidy war vessel that Ieremias used to patrol the coast just beyond Gyruum. I shrugged. ‘Ieremias is no threat,’ I decided, ‘if he farts northwards then Constantin will crush him.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ Olla sounded dubious.
    I stared at the river as it slid past the busy wharves, then watched a cat stalk along the rail of a moored ship before leaping down to hunt rats in the bilge. Olla was telling my son about the horse races that had to be postponed because Sigtryggr had led most of Eoferwic’s garrison south, but I was not listening, I was thinking. Plainly the permission to build the new monastery must have been given weeks ago, before even Constantin had led his invasion. How else would the archbishop have his piles of wood and masonry ready to be shipped?

    ‘When did Brunulf occupy Hornecastre?’ I asked, interrupting Olla’s enthusiastic account of a gelding he reckoned was the fastest horse in Northumbria.
    ‘Let me think,’ he frowned, pausing a few heartbeats, ‘must be the last new moon? Yes, it was.’
    ‘And the moon’s almost full,’ I said.
    ‘So …’ my son began, then went silent.
    ‘So the Scots invaded a few days ago!’ I said angrily. ‘Suppose Sigtryggr hadn’t been distracted by the West Saxons, what would he have done when he heard about Constantin?’
    ‘Marched north,’ my son said.
    ‘But he can’t, because the West Saxons are pissing all over his land to the south. They’re allied!’
    ‘The Scots and the West Saxons?’ my son sounded incredulous.
    ‘They made a secret treaty weeks ago! The Scots get Bebbanburg, and the West Saxon church gets Lindisfarena,’ I said, and I was sure I was right. ‘They get a new monastery, relics, pilgrims, silver. The Scots get land, and the church gets rich.’
    I was sure I was right, though in fact I was wrong. Not that it mattered in the end.
    Olla and my son were silent until my son shrugged. ‘So what do we do?’
    ‘We start killing,’ I said vengefully.
    And next day we rode south.
    ‘No killing,’ my daughter said firmly.
    I growled.
    Sigtryggr was no longer in Lindcolne. He had left most of his army to defend the walls and had ridden with fifty men to Ledecestre, a burh he had ceded to Mercia, to plead with Æthelflaed. He wanted her to influence her brother, the King of Wessex, to withdraw his troops from Hornecastre.
    ‘The West Saxons want us to start a war,’ my daughter said. She had been left in command of Lindcolne, leading a garrison of almost four hundred men. She could have confronted Brunulf with that army, but she insisted on leaving the West Saxons undisturbed. ‘You probably outnumber the bastards in Hornecastre,’ I pointed out.

    ‘I probably don’t,’ she said patiently, ‘and there are hundreds more West Saxons waiting across the border, just looking for an excuse to invade us.’
    And that was true. The Saxons in southern Britain wanted more than an excuse, they wanted everything. In my lifetime I had seen almost all of what is now called Englaland in Danish hands. The long ships had rowed up the rivers, piercing the land, and the warriors had conquered Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. Their armies had overrun Wessex, and it had