WAR LORD
Bernard Cornwell
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2020
Map © John Gilkes 2020
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Cover photography © CollaborationJS/Arcangel Images
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008183950
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2020 ISBN: 9780008183974
Version: 2020-09-15
Dedication
War Lord
is for Alexander Dreymon
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Place Names
Map
Part One: The Broken Oath
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part Two: The Devil’s Work
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Three: The Slaughter
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Historical Note
Author Note
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Bernard Cornwell
The SHARPE series
About the Publisher
PLACE NAMES
The spelling of place names in Anglo-Saxon England was an uncertain business, with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions of the names listed below, but I have usually employed whichever spelling is cited in either the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names or the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years nearest or contained within Alfred’s reign, AD 871–899, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was written as both Heilincigae and Hæglingaiggæ. Nor have I been consistent myself; I have preferred the modern form Northumbria to Norðhymbralond to avoid the suggestion that the boundaries of the ancient kingdom coincide with those of the modern county. So this list of places mentioned in the book is, like the spellings themselves, capricious.
Bebbanburg
Bamburgh, Northumberland
Brynstæþ
Brimstage, Cheshire
Burgham
Eamont Bridge, Cumbria
Cair Ligualid
Carlisle, Cumbria
Ceaster
Chester, Cheshire
Dacore
Dacre, Cumbria
Dingesmere
Wallasey Pool, Cheshire
Dun Eidyn
Edinburgh, Scotland
Dunholm
Durham, County Durham
Eamotum
River Eamont
Eoferwic
York, Yorkshire
Farnea Islands
Farne Islands, Northumberland
Foirthe
River Forth
Heahburh
Whitley Castle, Cumbria
Hedene
River Eden
Hlymrekr
Limerick, Ireland
Jorvik
Norse name for York
Lauther
River Lowther
Legeceasterscir
Cheshire
Lindcolne
Lincoln, Lincolnshire
Lindisfarena
Lindisfarne Island, Northumbria
Lundene
London
Mærse
The Mersey
Mameceaster
Manchester
Mön
Isle of Man
Orkneyjar
Orkney Islands
Rammesburi
Ramsbury, Wiltshire
Ribbel
River Ribble
Scipton
Skipton, Yorkshire
Snæland
Iceland
Snotengaham
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
Sumorsæte
Somerset
Strath Clota
Strathclyde
Suðreyjar
Hebrides
Temes
River Thames
Tesa
River Tees
Tinan
River Tyne
Tuede
River Tweed
Wiltunscir
Wiltshire
Wir
River Wyre
Wirhealum
The Wirral, Cheshire
Map
PART ONE
The Broken Oath
One
Chain mail is hot in summer, even when covered with a pale linen shift. The metal is heavy and heats relentlessly. Beneath the mail is a leather liner, and that is hot too, and the sun that morning was furnace hot. My horse was irritable, tormented by flies. There was hardly any wind across the hills that crouched under the midday sun. Aldwyn, my servant, carried my spear and my iron-bound shield that was painted with the wolf’s head of Bebbanburg. Serpent-Breath, my sword, hung on my left side, her hilt almost too hot to touch. My helmet, with its silver wolf’s head crest, was on the saddle’s pommel. The helmet would encase my whole head, was lined with leather, and had cheek-pieces that laced over my mouth so all an enemy would see were my eyes framed in battle-steel. They would not see the sweat or the scars of a lifetime of war.
They would see the wolf’s head, the gold about my neck, and the thick arm rings won in battle. They would know me, and the bravest of them, or the stupidest, would want to kill me for the renown my death would bring. Which is why I had brought eighty-three men to the hill, because to kill me they would have to deal with my warriors too. We were the warriors of Bebbanburg, the savage wolf pack of the north. And one priest.
The priest, mounted on one of my stallions, wore no mail nor carried a weapon. He was half my age, yet already showed grey at his temples. He had a long face, clean-shaven, with shrewd eyes. He wore a long black robe and had a golden cross hanging from his neck. ‘Aren’t you hot in that dress?’ I growled at him.
‘Uncomfortably,’ he said. We spoke in Danish, his native language and the tongue of my childhood.
‘Why,’ I asked, ‘am I always fighting for the wrong side?’
He smiled at that. ‘Even you can’t escape fate, Lord Uhtred. You must do God’s work whether you wish it or not.’
I bit back an angry retort and just stared into the wide treeless valley where the sun glared off pale rocks and shivered silver from a small stream. Sheep grazed high on the eastern hillside. The shepherd had seen us and was trying to move his flock south away from us, but his two dogs were hot, tired and thirsty and they panicked the sheep rather than herded them. The shepherd had nothing to fear from us, but he saw riders on the hill and saw sunlight glinting from weapons and so he feared. Deep in the valley the Roman road, now little more than a track of beaten earth edged with half-buried and overgrown stones, ran straight as a spear-haft beside the stream before bending west just beneath the hill where we waited. A hawk circled above the road’s bend, the still wings tilting to the warm air. The far southern horizon shimmered.
And from the shimmer one of my scouts appeared, galloping hard, and that meant only one thing. The enemy was coming.
I took my men and the one
