The Burning Land

Why do we fight?" he asked. "Because we were born.

‎"He sang the song of the sword, keening as he fed his blade, and Rollo, standing thigh-deep in the creek, ax swinging in murderous blows, blocked the enemy's escape. The Frisians, transported from confidence to bowel-loosening fear, began to drop their weapons.

The gods are capricious, and I was about to amuse them. And Alfred was right. I was a fool.

Children are easily swayed by religion, which is why it is a good thing that most eventually grow into sense. Chanting monks led the procession, then came children with green boughs, more monks, a group of abbots and bishops, then Steapa and fifty men of the royal guard, who walked immediately in front of Alfred and his guests.

BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Agincourt; the bestselling Saxon Tales, which include The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, Lords of the North, and Sword Song; and the Richard Sharpe novels, among many others. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod. WWW.BERNARDCORNWELL.NET

The hall’s door was framed by a pair of vast curved bones that had come from some sea monster.

He wanted to improve the world, while I did not believe and never have believed that we can improve the world, just merely survive as it slides into chaos.

Dealing with the Scots, my father had always said, was like trying to geld wildcats with your teeth, but luckily the wildcats spent much of their time fighting each other. Once

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.

I don’t care if he’s got a tail and tits, just take me to him.” The

superb book Mercia and the Making of England (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2000).

I just gazed at the smoke haze above Lundene, the darkness darkening a summer sky, and wished I were a bird, high in that nothingness, vanishing. Haesten

I spoke in English because the language of the Frisian people is so close to our own.

If we do nothing then Wessex will spread like a plague. There’ll be priests everywhere.” We seek the future. We stare into its fog and hope to see a landmark that will make sense of fate.

Uhtred of Steapa - He might be dumb as a parsnip but he knows how to fight.

The spinners were watching me, waiting, needles poised, and unless I did their bidding then my fate would be failure.

Folk tell their children that success lies in working hard and being thrifty, but that is as much nonsense as supposing that a badger, a fox, and a wolf could build a church. The way to wealth is to become a Christian bishop or a monastery’s abbot and thus be imbued with heaven’s permission to lie, cheat, and steal your way to luxury.

But Alfred could not live long. He was already an old man, well past forty years, and now he was looking to the future. He

In the middle of the nineteenth century a railway line was made from London’s Fenchurch Street to Southend and, when excavating at what is now South Benfleet (Beamfleot), the navvies discovered the charred remnants of burned ships among which were scattered human skeletons. Those remains were over nine hundred years old, and they were what was left of Haesten’s army and fleet. I