The Lords of the North Read Online Free PDF Page A

into the hills to avoid Kjartan's men. It was

summer, but a chill wind brought low clouds and a thin rain so that I was glad of my

leather-lined mail coat. Hild had smeared the metal rings with lanolin squeezed out of

newly-shorn fleeces, and it protected most of the metal from rust. She had put the grease on

my helmet and sword-blades too. We climbed, following the well-worn track, and a couple of

miles behind us another group followed, and there were fresh hoofprints in the damp earth

betraying that others had passed this way not long before. Such heavy use of the path should

have made me think. Kjartan the Cruel and Sven the One-Eyed lived off the dues that

travellers paid them, and if a traveller did not pay then they were robbed, taken as slaves or

killed. Kjartan and his son had to be aware that folk were trying to avoid them by using the

hill paths, and I should have been more wary. Bolti was unafraid, for he simply trusted me. He

told me tales of how Kjartan and Sven had become rich from slaves. They take anyone, Dane or

Saxon,' he said, 'and sell them over the water. If you're lucky you can sometimes ransom a

slave back, but the price will be high.' He glanced at Father Willibald. 'He kills all

priests.'
    'He does?'
    'He hates all Christian priests. He reckons they're sorcerers, so he half buries them and

lets his dogs eat them.'
    'What did he say?' Willibald asked me, pulling his mare aside before Witnere could savage

her.
    'He said Kjartan will kill you if he captures you, father.'
    'Kill me?'
    'He'll feed you to his hounds.'
    'Oh, dear God.' Willibald said. He was unhappy, lost, far from home, and nervous of the

strange northern landscape. Hild, on the other hand, seemed happier. She was nineteen years

old, and filled with patience for life's hardships. She had been born into a wealthy West

Saxon family, not noble, but possessed of enough land to live well, but she had been the last

of eight children and her father had promised her to the church's service because her mother

had nearly died when Hild was born, and he ascribed his wife's survival to God's benevolence.

So, at eleven years old, Hild, whose proper name was Sister Hildegyth, had been sent to the

nuns in Cippanhamm and there she had lived, shut away from the world, praying and spinning

yarn, spinning and praying, until the Danes had come and she had been whored. She still

whimpered in her sleep and I knew she was remembering her humiliations, but she was happy

to be away from Wessex and away from the folk who constantly told her she should return to

God's service. Willibald had chided her for abandoning her holy life, but I had warned him

that one more such comment would earn him a new and larger bellybutton and ever since he had

kept quiet. Now Hild drank in every new sight with a child's sense of wonder. Her pale face

had taken on a golden glow to match her hair. She was a clever woman, not the cleverest I

have known, but full of a shrewd wisdom. I have lived long now and have learned that some women

are trouble, and some are easy companions, and Hild was among the easiest I ever knew.

Perhaps that was because we were friends. We were lovers too, but never in love and she was

assailed by guilt. She kept that to herself and to her prayers, but in the daylight she had

begun to laugh again and to take pleasure from simple things, yet at times the darkness
    wrapped her and she would whimper and I would see her long fingers fidget with a crucifix

and I knew she was feeling God's claws raking across her soul. So we rode into the hills and I

had been careless, and it was Hild who saw the horsemen first. There were nineteen of them,

most in leather coats, but three in mail, and they were circling behind us, and I knew then

that we were being shepherded. Our track followed the side of a hill and to our right was a

steep drop to a rushing stream, and though we could escape into the