Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell Page B

dismissively, ‘and then winter, and after winter the time of sowing, and then another harvest and then another winter until time ends, and men will be born and men will die, and that is everything.’
    ‘Then tell me what I want to know,’ I said.
    She hesitated, then gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Put your hand on the rock,’ she said, but when I put my left hand flat on the cold stone she shook her head. ‘Your sword hand,’ she said and I obediently laid my right hand there instead. ‘Turn it over,’ she snarled, and I turned the hand palm upwards. She picked up the knife, watching my eyes. She was half smiling, daring me to withdraw my hand, and when I did not move she suddenly scored the knife across my palm. She scored it once from the ball of my thumb to the base of my small finger, then did it again, crosswise, and I watched the fresh blood well from the two cuts and I remembered the crosswise scar on Sigurd’s hand. ‘Now,’ she said, putting the knife down, ‘slap the stone hard.’ She pointed with a finger to the smooth centre of the stone. ‘Slap it there.’
    I slapped the stone hard and the blow left a spatter of blood drops radiating from a crude daub of a hand-print defaced by the red cross.
    ‘Now be silent,’ Ælfadell said, and shrugged off her cloak.
    She was naked. Thin, pale, ugly, old, shrivelled and naked. Her breasts were flaps of skin, her skin wrinkled and spotted, and her arms scrawny. She reached up and released her hair that had been twisted at the nape of her neck so that the grey-black strands fell about her shoulders in the fashion of a young unmarried girl. She was a parody of a woman, she was the galdricge, and I shuddered to look at her. She seemed unaware of my gaze, but stared at the blood, which gleamed under the flames. She touched the blood with a finger as crooked as any claw, smearing it across the smooth stone. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, and there seemed genuine curiosity in her voice.
    ‘You know who I am,’ I said.
    ‘Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ she said. She made a noise in her throat that might have been laughter, then moved the bloodstained claw to touch the cup. ‘Drink that, Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ she said, saying the name with sour mockery, ‘drink all of it!’
    I lifted the cup and drank. It tasted foul. Bitter and rank. It was throat-curdling and I drank it all.
    And Ælfadell laughed.
     
     
    I remember little of that night, and much of what I do remember I wish I could forget.
    I woke naked, cold and tied. My ankles and my wrists were strapped with leather thongs that had been knotted together to drag my hands down to my ankles. A faint grey light seeped through the crevice and tunnel to illuminate the big cave. The floor was pale with bat shit and my skin was smeared with my own vomit. Ælfadell, crooked and dark in her black cloak, was crouched over my mail, my two swords, my helmet, my hammer and my clothes. ‘You’re awake, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She pawed through my possessions. ‘And you are thinking,’ she went on, ‘that I would be easy to kill.’
    ‘I’m thinking you would be easy to kill, woman,’ I said. My voice was a dry-mouthed croak. I pulled at the leather bindings, but only managed to hurt my wrists.
    ‘I can tie knots, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She picked up the hammer of Thor and swung it on its leather thong. ‘A cheap amulet for a great lord.’ She cackled. She was bent, stooped and disgusting. Her claw-like hand tugged Serpent-Breath from its scabbard and she carried the blade towards me. ‘I should kill you, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She scarcely had the strength to lift the great blade, which she rested on one of my bent knees.
    ‘Why don’t you?’ I asked.
    She peered at me. ‘Are you wiser now?’ she asked. I said nothing. ‘You came for wisdom,’ she went on, ‘so did you find it?’
    Somewhere far beyond the cave a cock crowed. I tugged at the bonds again, and