Saxon 01 - The Last Kingdom Read Online Free PDF Page B

blew again and the shouting and the shieldbanging faded as our army lurched forward.

It went raggedly. Later, much later, I was to understand the reluctance of men to launch themselves against a shield wall, let alone a shield wall held at the top of a steep earthen bank, but on that day I was just impatient for our army to hurry forward and break the impudent Danes and Beocca had to restrain Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom me, catching hold of my bridle to stop me riding into the rearmost ranks. "We shall wait until they break through," he said.

"I want to kill a Dane," I protested.

"Don't be stupid, Uhtred," Beocca said angrily. "You try and kill a Dane," he went on, "and your father will have no sons. You are his only child now, and it is your duty to live."

So I did my duty and I hung back, and I watched as, so slowly, our army found its courage and advanced toward the city. The river was on our left, the empty encampment behind our right, and the inviting gap in the city wall was to our front; there the Danes were waiting silently, their shields overlapping.

"The bravest will go first," Beocca said to me, "and your father will be one of them.

Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom They will make a wedge, what the Latin authors call aporcinum capet. You know what that means?"

"No." Nor did I care.

"A swine's head. Like the tusk of a boar.

The bravest will go first and, if they break through, the others will follow."

Beocca was right. Three wedges formed in front of our lines, one each from the household troops of Osbert, Ælla, and my father. The men stood close together, their shields overlapping like the Danish shields, while the rearward ranks of each wedge held their shields high like a roof, and then, when they were ready, the men in the three wedges gave a great cheer and started forward. They did not run. I had expected them to run, but men cannot keep the wedge tight if they run. The wedge is war in Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom slow time, slow enough for the men inside the wedge to wonder how strong the enemy is and to fear that the rest of the army will not follow, but they did. The three wedges had not gone more than twenty paces before the remaining mass of men moved forward.

"I want to be closer," I said.

"You will wait," Beocca said.

I could hear the shouts now, shouts of defiance and shouts to give a man courage, and then the archers on the city walls loosed their bows and I saw the glitter of the feathers as the arrows slashed down toward the wedges, and a moment later the throwing spears came, arching over the Danish line to fall on the upheld shields.

Amazingly, at least to me, it seemed that none of our men was struck, though I could see their shields were stuck with arrows and Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom spears like hedgehog spines, and still the three wedges advanced, and now our own bowmen were shooting at the Danes, and a handful of our men broke from the ranks behind the wedges to hurl their own spears at the enemy shield wall.

"Not long now," Beocca said nervously. He made the sign of the cross. He was praying silently and his crippled left hand was twitching.

I was watching my father's wedge, the central wedge, the one just in front of the wolf's head banner, and I saw the closely touching shields vanish into the ditch that lay in front of the earthen wall and I knew my father was perilously close to death and I urged him to win, to kill, to give the name Uhtred of Bebbanburg even more renown, and then I saw the shield wedge emerge Bernard Cornwell The Last Kingdom from the ditch and, like a monstrous beast, crawl up the face of the wall.

"The advantage they have," Beocca said in the patient voice he used for teaching, "is that the enemy's feet are easy targets when you come from below." I think he was trying to reassure himself, but I believed him anyway, and it must have been true for my father's formation, first up the wall, did not seem to be checked