The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell Page B

saw her beast-heads, and they heard Haesten and I talk

Danish and they saw my arm rings. We did not kill the crews, but just stole their coins, weapons

and as much of their cargo as we could carry. One ship was heaped with bales of wool, for the

folk across the water prized Saxon fleeces; but we could take only three of the bales for fear

of cluttering the Fyrdraca's benches.
    At night we found a cove or river's mouth, and by day we rowed to sea and looked for prey,

and each day we went further westwards until I was sure we were off the coast of Cornwalum,

and that was enemy country. It was the old enemy that had confronted our ancestors when

they first came across the North Sea to make England. That enemy spoke a strange language, and

some Britons lived north of Northumbria and others lived in Wales or in Cornwalum, all places

on the wild edges of the isle of Britain where they had been pushed by our coming.
    They were Christians, indeed Father Beocca had told me they had been Christians before

we were and he claimed that no one who was a Christian could be a real enemy of another

Christian, but nevertheless the Britons hated us. Sometimes they allied themselves with

the Northmen to attack us, and sometimes the Northmen raided them, and sometimes they made

war against us on their own, and in the past the men of Cornwalum had made much trouble for

Wessex, though Leofric claimed they had been punished so badly that they now pissed

themselves whenever they saw a Saxon. Not that we saw any Britons at first. The places we

sheltered were deserted; all except one river mouth where a skin boat pushed off shore and a

half naked man paddled out to us and held up some crabs which he wanted to sell to us. We took

a basketful of the beasts and paid him two pennies. Next night we grounded Fyrdraca on a

rising tide and collected fresh water from a stream, and Leofric and I climbed a hill and

stared inland. Smoke rose from distant valleys, but there was no one in sight, not even a

shepherd.
    'What are you expecting,' Leofric asked, 'enemies?'
    'A monastery,' I said.
    'A monastery!' He was amused. 'You want to pray?'
    'Monasteries have silver,' I said.
    'Not down here, they don't. They're poor as stoats. Besides …'
    'Besides what?'
    He jerked his head towards the crew. 'You've got a dozen good Christians aboard. Lot of bad

ones too, of course, but at least a dozen good ones. They won't raid a monastery with you.'
    He was right. A few of the men had showed some scruples about piracy, but I assured them

that the Danes used trading ships to spy on their enemies. That was true enough, though I doubt

either of our victims had been serving the Danes, but both ships had been crewed by

foreigners and, like all Saxons, the crew of the Fyrdraca had a healthy dislike of

foreigners, though they made an exception for Haesten and the dozen crewmen who were

Frisians. The Frisians were natural pirates, bad as the Danes, and these twelve had come to

Wessex to get rich from war and so were glad that the Fyrdraca was seeking plunder.
    As we went west we began to see coastal settlements, and some were surprisingly large.

Cenwulf, who had fought with us at Cynuit and was a good man, told us that the Britons of

Cornwalum dug tin out of the ground and sold it to strangers. He knew that because his father

had been a trader and had frequently sailed this coast.
    'If they sell tin,' I said, 'then they must have money.'
    'And men to guard it,' Cenwulf said dryly.
    'Do they have a king?'
    No one knew. It seemed probable, though where the king lived or who he was we could not know,

and perhaps, as Haesten suggested, there was more than one king. They did have weapons

because, one night, as the Fyrdraca crept into a bay, an arrow flew from a cliff top to be

swallowed in the sea beside our oars. We might never have known that arrow had been shot

except I happened to be looking up and saw it, fledged