Free The Edge on the Sword by Rebecca Tingle Page A

she told herself. We might stay awhile at the river.
    “You go ahead and see if the fish are hungry,” Flæd told him, stopping between their father’s council chamber and the family’s buildings. “I’ll do Father John’s lesson as fast as I can, and then I’ll meet you.” Edward made a good-natured face at his sister. He would have rushed through such studying at breakfast, his look seemed to say. Flæd gave him a mock scowl in return, and ducked into her quarters. Grabbing her volume of the Chronicle, she found the passage where she had left off and started to read. But she could hardly concentrate on the words. Edward is waiting for me—the thought circled cheerfully in her mind like Wulf chasing his tail. With a sigh of impatience, she closed the book, tucked it under her arm, and hurried out toward the meadow.
    At the burgh wall Flæd seated herself in the sun where it glowed upon the sandy stone blocks. In the distance she could see two small figures, Edward and Wulf, making their way along the riverbank toward the place where they planned to fish. The tiny Edward raised his arm to point at something ahead of them, and the tiny Wulf loped forward, veering out into the meadow.
    A little sound made Flæd turn her head, and she saw her warder crouching down against the wall a short way off. Flæd’s spirits dimmed. It was easy for Edward to say he didn’t care about the Mercian envoy’s company. Despite her guardian’s favors, Flæd felt more and more restless as the days of protection continued with no sign of any danger.
    It was worse when she tried to understand what she was waiting for. Ethelred remained a faceless name to her, Mercia was an outline on a map, and Lunden was a dot inside it. She had watched her mother these past weeks, trying to imagine how she must have felt when she came from Mercia to marry Alfred. Ealhswith and Alfred must have thought their daughter would learn to accept her betrothal, the way they had settled into their lives with each other. Well, Flæd thought with a quiver of fear and stubbornness, I haven’t.
    Think about something else, Flæd told herself, ducking her head unhappily and opening her book. She had been reading about the constant threat of Danish settlers, who seized English land for themselves and their families. Today Flæd read the entry for the year 871. Alfred and his brother met the enemy at Readingas. The Danes had occupied an earthwork—a great mounded wall of earth fronted by a broad trench deeper than a man was tall—to protect themselves in the flat land between two rivers. Nine times Alfred and his brother rode to battle that season, the Chronicle stated. Nine times they faced the Danes in their earthwork defenses, and gained only a single victory.
    Flæd thought of her father, only a few years beyond his twentieth winter, riding exhausted into skirmish after skirmish. Secure behind their earthwork, the Danes held fast, and Alfred’s brother died before the winter came again. Young and battle-weary, Alfred became the king of the battered West Saxon kingdom. “And in that year,” the Chronicle’s entry finished bleakly, “were slain nine earls and one king.”
    Flæd closed the book. Father John would be satisfied with this much reading—she had done her duty. She looked out over the meadow again. She could no longer see Wulf and Edward, but now she wanted very much to be with them, to sit with them on the grassy riverbank watching for the quick brown and silver fish. Hefting herself to her feet, she set out across the meadow with her book.
    In the center of the broad pasture Flæd could see a little band of horses, their heads lowered to the tender spring grass. As she drew closer she could hear the sound of their blunt teeth tearing at the short blades. Flæd knew many of these horses. Some belonged to the retainers who lived in this burgh with the royal family, and others were owned by the royal family itself. Flæd approached the little