The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell [Bernard Cornwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

Eight

Before the Pedredan reaches the sea it makes a great curve through the swamp, a curve that is almost three-quarters of a circle and on the inside of the bank where the curve begins there was another tiny settlement; just a half-dozen hovels built on stilts sunk into a slight rise in the ground. The settlement was called Palfleot, which means ‘the place with the stakes’, for the folk who had once lived there had staked eel and fish traps in the nearby streams, but the Danes had driven those folk away and burned their houses, so that Palfleot was now a place of charred pilings and blackened mud. We landed there, shivering in the dawn. The tide was falling, exposing the great banks of sand and mud across which Iseult and I had struggled, while the wind was coming from the west, cold and fresh, hinting of rain, though for now there was a slanting sunlight throwing long shadows of marram grass and reeds across the marshes. Two swans flew south and I knew they were a message from the gods, but what their message was I could not tell.

The punts pushed away, abandoning us. They were now going north and east, following intricate waterways known only to the marshmen. We stayed for a while in Palfleot, doing nothing in particular, but doing it energetically so that the Danes, a long way off across the great bend in the river, would be sure to see us. We pulled down the blackened timbers and Iseult, who had acute eyesight, watched the place where the Danish ships’ masts showed as scratches against the western clouds. ‘There’s a man up a mast,’ she said after a while, and I stared, saw the man clinging to the mast top and knew we had been spotted. The tide was falling, exposing more mud and sand, and now that I was sure we had been seen we walked across the drying expanse that was cradled by the river’s extravagant bend.

As we drew closer I could see more Danes in their ships’ rigging. They were watching us, but would not yet be worried for they outnumbered my few forces and the river lay between us and them, but whoever commanded in the Danish camp would also be ordering his men to arm themselves. He would want to be ready for whatever happened, but I also hoped he would be clever. I was laying a trap for him, and for the trap to work he had to do what I wanted him to do, but at first, if he was clever, he would do nothing. He knew we were impotent, separated from him by the Pedredan, and so he was content to watch as we closed on the river’s bank opposite his grounded ships and then slipped and slid down the steep muddy bluff that the ebbing tide had exposed. The river swirled in front of us, grey and cold.

There were close to a hundred Danes watching now.

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