Sword Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

suggested mildly.
    “Sigefrid will,” Ulf said. “Erik? He’s the younger. Men speak well of him, but Sigefrid can’t wait for trouble.”
    “He wants ransom?” I asked.
    “He might,” Ulf said dubiously. “He’s got to pay all those men, and he got nothing but mouse droppings in Frankia. But who’ll pay him ransom? Lundene belongs to Mercia, doesn’t it?”
    “It does,” I said.
    “And there’s no king in Mercia,” Ulf said. “Isn’t natural, is it? A kingdom without a king.”
    I thought of Æthelwold’s visit and touched my amulet of Thor’s hammer. “Have you ever heard of the dead being raised?” I asked Ulf.
    “The dead being raised?” He stared at me, alarmed, and touched his own hammer amulet. “The dead are best left in Niflheim, lord.”
    “An old magic, perhaps?” I suggested. “Raising the dead?”
    “You hear tales,” Ulf said, now gripping his amulet tightly.
    “What tales?”
    “From the far north, lord. From the land of ice and birch. Strange things happen there. They say men can fly in the darkness, and I did hear that the dead walk on the frozen seas, but I never saw such a thing.” He raised the amulet to his lips and kissed it. “I reckon they’re just stories to scare children on winter nights, lord.”
    “Maybe,” I said, and turned as a boy came running along the foot of the newly raised wall. He jumped the timbers that would eventually make the fighting platform, skidded in a piece of mud, clambered up the bank and then stood, panting too hard to be able to speak. I waited until he caught his breath. “ Haligast , lord,” he said, “ Haligast !”
    Ulf looked at me quizzically. Like all traders he spoke some English, but haligast puzzled him. “The Holy Ghost,” I translated into Danish.
    “Coming, lord,” the boy gasped excitedly and pointed upriver. “Coming now!”
    “The Holy Ghost is coming?” Ulf asked in alarm. He probably had no idea what the Holy Ghost was, but he knew enough to fear all specters, and my recent question about the living dead had scared him.
    “Alfred’s ship,” I explained, then turned back to the boy. “Is the king on board?”
    “His flag’s flying, lord.”
    “Then he is,” I said.
    Ulf pulled his tunic straight. “Alfred? What does he want?”
    “He wants to discover my loyalties,” I said drily.
    Ulf grinned. “So you might be the one who twitches on a rope, eh, lord?”
    “I need ax-heads,” I told him. “Take your best ones to the house and we’ll discuss a price later.”
    I was not surprised by Alfred’s arrival. In those years he spent much of his time traveling between the growing burhs to inspect the work. He had been to Coccham a dozen times in as many months, but this visit, I reckoned, was not to examine the walls, but to find out why Æthelwold had come to see me. The king’s spies had done their work, and so the king had come to question me.
    His ship was coming fast, carried by the Temes’s winter flow. In the cold months it was quicker to travel by ship, and Alfred liked the Haligast because it enabled him to work on board as he journeyed along the northern frontier of Wessex. The Haligast had twenty oars and room enough for half Alfred’s bodyguard and the inevitable troop of priests. The king’s banner, a green dragon, flew from the masthead, while two flags hung from the cross spar, which would have held a sail if the ship had been at sea. One flag showed a saint, while the other was a green cloth embroidered with a white cross. At the ship’s stern was a small cabin that cramped the steersman, but provided Alfred a place to keep his desk. A second ship, the Heofonhlaf , carried the rest of the bodyguard and still more priests. Heofonhlaf meant bread of heaven. Alfred never could name a ship.
    Heofonhlaf berthed first and a score of men in mail, carrying shields and spears, clambered ashore to line the wooden wharf. The Haligast followed, her steersman thumping the bow hard on a piling