The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8) by Bernard Cornwell

pagan,’ she said, ‘and you are. Why shouldn’t I be?’
    My son looked horrified, Finan was grinning. ‘You worship my gods?’ I asked.
    ‘I do, father.’
    ‘But you were raised Christian!’ her brother said.
    ‘So was father,’ she said, still gazing at me, ‘and so were you, brother, but don’t tell me you don’t pray to our gods too. I know you do.’ Then she looked past me at Aldwyn, and her face hardened. At that moment she looked so like her mother that it hurt to see her. ‘Let me, father,’ she said, holding out her hand again.
    I gave her Wasp-Sting.
    ‘No!’ Aldwyn exclaimed.
    Stiorra used her left hand to tear the linen dress out of the brooch so that one breast was exposed. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted to see, priest?’ she asked. ‘So look at it!’
    ‘No!’ Aldwyn was whimpering. He half crouched, not daring to look.
    ‘Stiorra!’ my son whispered.
    But my daughter had no pity. I watched her face as she killed the priest and it was hard, merciless and determined. She cut him first, slashing the short-sword to open his scalp and his neck, then to slice his forearms as he tried to defend himself, and her breast and dress were spattered with his blood as she beat him down with two more cuts to the head, and only then did she use two hands on Wasp-Sting’s short hilt to slice hard at his throat. The blade lodged there and she grunted as she hauled it back and across to cut his gullet. She watched as he fell, as his blood spurted to puddle on one of the naked women running from the goat-god. She watched Aldwyn die and I watched her. It was always difficult to read her face, but I did not see any revulsion at the slaughter she had made, only what looked like curiosity. She even smiled slightly as the priest twitched and made a gurgling noise. His fingers clawed at the little tiles, then he gave a great jerk and was still.
    Stiorra offered the sword hilt-first to me. ‘Thank you, father,’ she said calmly. ‘Now I must wash.’ She held the ruined, blood-soaked dress over her nakedness and walked from the room.
    ‘Christ Jesus,’ my son said quietly.
    ‘She’s your daughter, so she is,’ Finan said. He walked to the priest’s corpse and nudged it with his foot, ‘And the image of her mother,’ he added.
    ‘We need six wagons,’ I said, ‘at least six.’
    Finan and my son were still both staring at the dead priest, who, quite suddenly, farted.
    ‘Six wagons,’ I said again, ‘harnessed with horses, not oxen. And preferably loaded with hay or straw. Something heavy, anyway. Logs, maybe.’
    ‘Six wagons?’ Finan asked.
    ‘At least six,’ I said, ‘and we need them by tomorrow.’
    ‘Why, lord?’ he asked.
    ‘Because we’re going to a wedding,’ I said, ‘of course.’
    And so we were.

Three
     
    There was a cavernous space beneath Father Creoda’s church, a space so big that it stretched beyond the church’s walls, which were supported by massive stone pillars and arches. The cellar walls were also of stone, great blocks of roughly trimmed masonry, while the floor was beaten earth. There were some ancient bones piled on a stone shelf against the eastern wall, but otherwise the cellar was empty, dark and stinking. The Romans must have built it, though in their day I doubted that a nearby cesspit would have been allowed to leak through the stonework. ‘You can smell it in the church,’ Father Creoda said sadly, ‘unless the wind is in the east.’
    ‘Shit leaks through the masonry?’ I asked. I had no intention of finding out by dropping through the massive trapdoor into the dark space.
    ‘Constantly,’ he said, ‘because the mortar has crumbled.’
    ‘Then seal it with pitch,’ I suggested, ‘like a boat’s timbers. Stuff the cracks with horsehair and smother it in pitch.’
    ‘Pitch?’
    ‘You can buy it in Gleawecestre.’ I peered into the darkness. ‘Whose bones?’
    ‘We don’t know. They were here before the Lady Æthelflaed built the