The Burning Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

some tide-besieged sandbank, and so she had run away withhim. All that I was to learn, but for now I just knew she was Harald’s woman, and that Haesten had spoken the truth; to see her was to want her. “You will release me,” she said with an astonishing confidence.
    “I’ll do what I choose,” I told her, “and I don’t take orders from a fool.” She bridled at that, and I saw she was about to spit again, and so raised a hand as if to strike her and she went very still. “No lookouts,” I said to her. “What leader doesn’t post sentries? Only a fool.” She hated that. She hated it because it was true.
    “Jarl Harald will give you money for my freedom,” she said.
    “My price for your freedom,” I said, “is Harald’s liver.”
    “You are Uhtred?” she asked.
    “I am the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg.”
    She gave a ghost of a smile. “Then Bebbanburg will need a new lord if you don’t release me. I shall curse you. You will know agony, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, even greater agony than him.” She nodded at Edwulf, who was being carried out of the church by four of my men.
    “He’s a fool too,” I said, “because he set no sentries.” Skade’s raiding party had descended on the village in the morning sunlight and no one saw them coming. Some villagers, those we had seen from the skyline, escaped, but most had been captured, and of those only the young women and the children who might have been sold as slaves still lived.
    We let one Dane live, one Dane and Skade. The rest we killed. We took their horses, their mail, and their weapons. I ordered the surviving villagers to drive their livestock north to Suthriganaweorc because Harald’s men had to be denied food, though as the harvest was already in the barns and the orchards were heavy, that would be hard. We were still slaughtering the last of the Danes when Finan’s scouts reported that horsemen were approaching the hill crest to the south.
    I went to meet them, taking seventy men, the one Dane I would spare, Skade, and also the long piece of hemp rope that had been attached to the church’s small bell. I joined Finan and we rode to where the hill’s crest was gentle grassland and from where we couldlook far to the south. New smoke pyres thickened in the distant sky, but nearer, much nearer, was a band of horsemen who rode on the banks of a willow-shadowed stream. I estimated they numbered about the same as my men, who were now lined on the crest either side of my wolf’s-head banner. “Get off the horse,” I ordered Skade.
    “Those men are searching for me,” she said defiantly, nodding at the horsemen who had paused at the sight of my battle line.
    “Then they’ve found you,” I said, “so dismount.”
    She just stared at me proudly. She was a woman who hated being given orders.
    “You can dismount,” I said patiently, “or I can pull you out of the saddle. The choice is yours.”
    She dismounted and I gestured for Finan to dismount. He drew his sword and stood close to the girl. “Now undress,” I told her.
    A look of utter fury darkened her face. She did nothing, but I sensed an anger like a tensed adder inside her. She wanted to kill me, she wanted to scream, she wanted to call the gods down from the smoke-patterned sky, but there was nothing she could do. “Undress,” I said, “or have my men strip you.”
    She turned as if looking for a way to escape, but there was none. There was a glint of tears in her eyes, but she had no choice but to obey me. Finan looked at me quizzically, because I was not known for being cruel to women, but I did not explain to him. I was remembering what Haesten had told me, how Harald was impulsive, and I wanted to provoke Harald Bloodhair. I would insult his woman and so hope to force Harald to anger instead of sober judgment.
    Skade’s face was an expressionless mask as she stripped herself of her mail coat, a leather jerkin, and linen breeches. One or two of my men cheered when her jerkin