The Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell Page A

admitted, continuing his story of Eochaid, 'but he stopped kicking me every time I did it.

And he liked to talk to me.'
    'About what?'
    'Oh, about everything! The gods, the weather, fishing, how to make good cheese, women,

everything. And he reckoned I wasn't a warrior, which I'm not really. Now I'm king, of

course, so I have to be a warrior, but I don't much like it. Eochaid made me swear I'd never go

to war against him.'
    'And you swore that?'
    'Of course! I like him. I'll raid his cattle, of course, and kill any men he sends into

Cumbraland, but that's not war, is it?'
    So Eochaid had taken the church's silver and Gelgill had brought Guthred south into

Northumbria, but instead of giving him to the priests he had taken him eastwards,

reckoning that he could make more money by selling Guthred to Kjartan than by honouring

the contract he had made with the churchmen. The priests and monks followed, begging for

Guthred's release, and it was then they had all met Sven who saw his own chance of profit in

Guthred. The freed slave was Hardicnut's son, which meant he was heir to land in Cumbraland,

and that suggested he was worth a largish bag of silver in ransom. Sven had planned to take

Guthred back to Dunholm where he would doubtless have killed all seven churchmen. Then I had

arrived with my face wrapped in black linen and now Gelgill was dead, Sven had stinking wet

hair and Guthred was free. I understood all that, but what did not make sense was why seven

Saxon churchmen had come from Cair Ligualid to pay a fortune for Guthred who was both a Dane

and a pagan. 'Because I'm their king, of course,' Guthred said, as though the answer were

obvious, 'though I never thought I'd become king. Not after Eochaid took me captive, but

that's what the Christian god wants, so who am I to argue?'
    'Their god wants you?' I asked, looking at the seven churchmen who had travelled so far to

free him.
    'Their god wants me,' Guthred said seriously, 'because I'm the chosen one. Do you think I

should become a Christian?'
    'No.' I said.
    'I think I should,' he said, ignoring my answer, 'just to show gratitude. The gods don't

like ingratitude, do they?'
    'What the gods like,' I said, 'is chaos.'
    The gods were happy.
    Cair Ligualid was a sorry place. Norsemen had pillaged and burned it two years before,

just after Guthred's father had been killed by the Scots, and the town had not even been half

rebuilt. What was left of it stood on the south bank of the River Hedene, and that was why the

settlement existed, for it was built at the first crossing place of the river, a river

which offered some protection against marauding Scots. It had offered no protection

against the fleet of Vikings who had sailed up the Hedene, stolen whatever they could, raped

what they wanted, killed what they did not want, and taken away the survivors as slaves. Those

Vikings had come from their settlements in Ireland and they were the enemies of the Saxons,

the Irish, the Scots and even, at times, of their cousins, the Danes, and they had not spared the

Danes living in Cair Ligualid. So we rode through a broken gate in a broken wall into a

broken town, and it was dusk, and the day's rain had finally lifted and a shaft of red

sunlight came from beneath the western clouds as we entered the ruined town. We rode

straight into the light of that swollen
    sun which reflected from my helm that had the silver wolf on its crest and it shone from my

mail coat and from my arm rings and from the hilts of my two swords, and someone shouted that I

was the king. I looked like a king. I rode Witnere who tossed his great head and pawed at the

ground and I was dressed in my shining war-glory.
    Cair Ligualid was crowded. Here and there a house had been rebuilt, but most of the folk

were camping in the scorched ruins, along with their livestock, and there were far too many of

them to be the survivors of the old Norse raids.