The Lords of the North Read Online Free PDF

dale we would inevitably

be slower than the men who now joined the track behind us. They did not try to approach. They

could see we were armed and they did not want a fight, they just wanted to make sure we kept

plodding north to whatever fate awaited us. 'Can't you fight them off?' Bolti demanded.

Thirteen against nineteen?' I suggested. 'Yes,' I said, 'if the thirteen will fight, but

they won't.' I gestured at the swordsmen Bolti was paying to accompany us. They're good

enough to scare off bandits,' I went on, 'but they're not stupid enough to fight Kjartan's men.

If I ask them to fight they'll most likely join the enemy and share your daughters.'
    'But. . .' he began, then fell silent for we could at last see what did await us. A slave

fair was being held where the stream tumbled into a deeper dale and in that larger valley

was a sizeable village built where a bridge, nothing more than a giant stone slab, crossed a

wider stream that I took to be the Wiire. There was a crowd in the village and I saw those folk

were being guarded by more men. The riders who were following us came a little closer, but

stopped when I stopped. I gazed down the hill. The village was too far away to tell whether

Kjartan or Sven were there, but it seemed safe to assume the men in the valley had come from

Dunholm and that one or other of Dunholm's two lords led them. Bolti was squeaking in alarm,

but I ignored him. Two other tracks led into the village from the south and I guessed that

horsemen were guarding all such paths and had been intercepting travellers all day. They

had been driving their prey towards the village and those who could not pay the toll were

being taken captive. 'What are you going to do?' Bolti asked, close
    to panic.
    'I'm going to save your life,' I said, and I turned to one of his twin daughters and

demanded that she gave me a black linen scarf that she wore as a belt. She unwound it and,

with a trembling hand, gave it to me and I wrapped it around my head, covering my mouth, nose

and forehead, then asked Hild to pin it into place. 'What are you doing?' Bolti squawked

again. I did not bother to reply. Instead I crammed my helmet over the scarf. The

cheek-pieces were fitted so that my face was now a mask of polished metal over a black skull.

Only my eyes could be seen. I half drew Serpent-Breath to make sure she slid easily in her

scabbard, then I urged Witnere a few paces forward. 'I am now Thorkild the Leper,' I told

Bolti. The scarf made my voice thick and indistinct.
    'You're who?' he asked, gaping at me.
    'I am Thorkild the Leper,' I said, 'and you and I will now go and deal with them.'
    The?' he said faintly.
    I waved everyone forward. The band that had circled to follow us had gone south again,

presumably to find the next group trying to evade Kjartan's war-band.
    'I hired you to protect me,' Bolti said in desperation.
    'And I am going to protect you,' I said. His Saxon wife was wailing as though she were at

someone's funeral and I snarled at her to be silent. Then, a couple of hundred paces from

the village, I stopped and told everyone except Bolti to wait. 'Just you and I now.' I told

Bolti.
    'I think you should deal with them alone,' he said, then squealed. He squealed because I had

slapped the rump of his horse so that it leaped forward. I caught up with him. 'Remember,' I

said, 'I'm Thorkild the Leper, and if you betray who I really am then I shall kill you, your

wife, your sons and then I'll sell your daughters into whoredom. Who am I?'
    Thorkild.' he stammered.
    Thorkild the Leper.' I said. We were in the village now, a miserable place of low stone

cottages roofed with turf, and there were at least thirty or forty folk being guarded at the

village's centre, but off to one side, close to the stone-slab bridge, a table and benches

had been placed on a patch of grass. Two men sat behind the table with a jug of ale in front of

them, and all