The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) Read Online Free PDF Page A

looked up at me, puzzled. ‘Waldhere, lord?’
    ‘You’re from Bebbanburg?’
    ‘Bebbanburg?’ He shook his head. ‘No, lord, we come from Eoferwic.’
    ‘Eoferwic!’ I could not hide my surprise. ‘And “we”? How many of you are there?’ I looked southwards but saw no more riders.
    ‘Five of us left Eoferwic, lord, but we were attacked.’
    ‘And you alone lived?’ Finan said accusingly.
    ‘The others drew the attackers away, lord.’ Father Eadig spoke to me rather than to Finan, ‘they wanted me to reach you. They knew it was important.’
    ‘Who sent you?’ I demanded.
    ‘King Sigtryggr, lord.’
    I felt a cold pulse shiver around my heart. For a moment I dared not speak, frightened of what this young priest would say. ‘Sigtryggr,’ I finally said, and wondered what crisis would provoke my son-in-law to send a messenger. I feared for my daughter. ‘Is Stiorra ill?’ I asked urgently. ‘The children?’

    ‘No, lord, the queen and her children are well.’
    ‘Then …’
    ‘The king requests your return, lord,’ Eadig blurted out, and took a rolled parchment from inside his robe. He held it out to me.
    I took the crushed parchment, but did not unroll it. ‘Why?’
    ‘The Saxons have attacked, lord. Northumbria is at war.’ He was still on his knees, gazing up at me. ‘The king wants your troops, lord. And he wants you.’
    I cursed. So Bebbanburg must wait. We would ride south.

Two
    We rode next morning. I led one hundred and ninety-four men, together with a score of boys who were servants, and we rode south through rain and wind and beneath clouds as dark as Father Eadig’s robe. ‘Why did my son-in-law send a priest?’ I asked him. Sigtryggr, like me, worshipped the old gods, the real gods of Asgard.
    ‘We do his clerical work, lord.’
    ‘We?’
    ‘We priests, lord. There are six of us who serve King Sigtryggr by writing his laws and charters. Most …’ he hesitated, ‘it’s because we can read and write.’
    ‘And most pagans can’t?’ I asked.
    ‘Yes, lord.’ He blushed. He knew that those of us who worshipped the old gods disliked being called pagans, which is why he had hesitated.
    ‘You can call me a pagan,’ I said, ‘I’m proud of it.’
    ‘Yes, lord,’ he said uneasily.
    ‘And this pagan can read and write,’ I told him. I had the skills because I had been raised as a Christian, and the Christians value writing, which is, I suppose, a useful thing. King Alfred had established schools throughout Wessex where boys were molested by monks when they were not being forced to learn their letters. Sigtryggr, curious about how the Saxons ruled in southern Britain, had once asked me whether he should do the same, but I had told him to teach boys how to wield a sword, hold a shield, guide a plough, ride a horse, and butcher a carcass. ‘And you don’t need schools for that,’ I had told him.

    ‘And he sent me, lord,’ Father Eadig went on, ‘because he knew you would have questions.’
    ‘Which you can answer?’
    ‘As best I can, lord.’
    Sigtryggr’s message on the parchment merely said that West Saxon forces had invaded southern Northumbria and that he needed my forces in Eoferwic as soon as I could reach that city. The message had been signed with a scrawl that might have belonged to my son-in-law, but also bore his seal of the axe. The Christians claim that the one great advantage of reading and writing is that we can be sure a message is real, but they fake documents all the time. There is a monastery in Wiltunscir that has the skill to produce charters that look as if they are two or three hundred years old. They scrape old parchments, but leave just enough of the original writing visible so that the new words, written over the old in weak ink, are hard to read, and they carve copies of seals, and the faked charters all claim that some ancient king granted the church valuable lands or the income from customs’ dues. Then the abbots and bishops who