The roughened fingers relaxed their grasp. Ceric let his head drop. He lifted the calloused and time-weathered hand to his lips, and kissed it.
He must stand now, and he did. No one was fighting, at least no one near, and he could not allow the body to be pillaged. The sword Ceric knew so well had already been taken.
He took up spear and his blue and yellow shield and started toward Edwin. It was his body-guard Alwin at his side, Ceric saw. As he neared Edwin tried to raise his arm, then winced and stopped before the arm was waist high. Blood was smeared over his younger brother’s face, but if he was on his feet he could ride.
“Cadmar is dead.” Ceric told them. “His last word was Christ’s name.” He was blinking away the water from his eyes, and saw that both Edwin and Alwin did so as well.
Finding the old man here had driven almost all else from his thoughts. Now another came to mind.
“The Prince – where is he?”
Alwin had answer. “We have seen him. He has won the field, and is down the road where the horses are. Eorconbeald is with him.”
Ceric muttered a prayer of thanks. Then his thoughts returned to the warrior-monk.
“Cadmar,” he said. “We must get his body. We will bury him here, in the wood.”
Edwin made to take a step forward, but his body-guard stopped him. “You are staying here. We will work the faster without you.”
“Are you hurt,” asked his brother.
“No,” Edwin lied.
Alwin snorted. “Broken ribs and nose. Almost broke his head, as well.” He led Edwin back within the wood, to rest against a tree trunk.
They carried Cadmar to the trees, Ceric at the shoulders, Alwin at the feet. Cadmar had lost his sword, but Ceric would not leave him weaponless. He left the man his knife, and also the small silver cross about his neck. Ceric ran and brought his horse, and pulled his blanket from his saddle bag. They draped this as shroud over the body. There was no way to dig a grave. They must pile the body with rock.
Hrald had lost Onund in the trees. His quarry had removed his bright shield from his back, leaving his pursuer to follow the glint of metal from his helmet, and the duller gleam of the man’s ring-tunic. The thickness of the undergrowth and the tangle of ground vines made for noisy passage forward. Now it was silent. Hrald stopped, listening for the crackle of a branch underfoot betraying movement. Nothing. For a moment he remembered walking with Tindr in the woods of Gotland, and the way Tindr, who could not hear, would scan.
As Hrald waited, eyes shifting, Onund stepped forward from behind an oak tree.
“Have you stopped running, Onund?” Hrald asked. “You ran, fearful of Askil or any others who would make you pay for your part in the killing at Saltfleet. But I will make you pay, now.”
Onund grinned. “You cannot kill me, for Gunnulf’s sake.”
Hrald felt his anger flare. Gunnulf had been his friend since boyhood, his closest friend at Four Stones. Onund would not borrow on that now. This man had threatened him bodily, defamed him before the warriors of Turcesig, and taken up with a force of invaders who had killed nine of his men. He at last had the chance to speak the truth to this renegade from his hall.
“Gunnulf!” was Hrald’s retort. “You are not fit to name him. If you had been true friend to Gunnulf you would never have betrayed Four Stones.
“You could not bear that he died for Four Stones, that he placed something above you.”
Onund gave howling protest to this charge, and pulled his sword.
Hemmed in by trees they had almost no room in which to fight. Hrald dropped his spear and drew his own blade, for in such close quarters it must be swords. They came at each other with all the heat they both felt, slashing at knees, swinging at the head, lunging forward to attempt a strike at an unguarded shoulder. Save for their grunts of effort they were silent. They circled each other as best they could, mindful of the hooking reach of roots and vines that might ensnare their feet. Blows rained upon their shields, and those that struck the iron boss stung their hands within the grip. The steel of their blades clashed, that angry ringing of lethal metal hungry to bite flesh. Sweat ran from their brows as they moved, eyes fixed on the other, in the warrior’s ritual of death.
Hrald stumbled. In a deft move Onund swept his shield up and away from his body. It hit Hrald in the head, knocking off his helmet. The iron rim banding the edge of the disc struck his forehead. It opened a seam in his flesh, and the ensuing blood flooded over Hrald’s right eyebrow and into his eye. Onund gave a triumphant laugh. Hrald had to step back, give himself as much cover with his shield as he could, and use the wrist of his sword arm to try to wipe the blood out of his eye.
As Onund moved in to reengage, Hrald abandoned all caution. He had been hit and lost his helmet. Onund had drawn first blood, and the advantage he had won was great. He came at Onund, shield pushing, blade flashing, with all the speed and strength he possessed. Leaves trembling from branches were sliced to ribbands of green. Twigs and chips of tree bark flew from where the steel of his sword touched them. He forced Onund to give ground, pushing him back under his onslaught. Then Onund stumbled, his left shoulder dipping. Hrald was ready, and got in with his sword tip at the guard of Onund’s blade. The weapon lifted up and out of his grip, and fell into the ferns by the oak.
Hrald must now finish the deed. Their eyes locked for an instant. The blood dribbling from Hrald’s forehead again ran into his eye, and he tried to blink it away, unwilling to move his sword hand.
Onund’s right hand was bleeding where the edge of Hrald’s sword had caught it. He made no move with it towards the knife at his right hip.
Then Onund lifted both hands, his empty right, and his left, still holding his shield. The right was raised palm forward, in the sign of surrender.
Hrald could not attack a man surrendering.
“Pick up your sword, and fight,” he ordered.
Onund shook his head. Hrald could see from the line of blood on the man’s raised hand that his sword edge had caught at the base of his thumb, perhaps disabling it.
Hrald could not kill him unless he fought. He took a step back, yet they were no more than two sword’s lengths apart. Hrald eased the hold on his shield, considering if he should accept the surrender. To kill a man no longer fighting – he did not think himself capable of that, even one akin to Onund.
Then Onund pulled his knife from his hip, and flung it overhand at Hrald’s bare head. Up came Hrald’s shield, blocking it. The knife point stuck until Hrald flicked his sword to knock it away.
Onund shook off his shield. He yelled in fury as he charged at Hrald. “I will kill you with my bare hands!”
Onund was a famed wrestler, perhaps the best at Four Stones. Hrald would not allow the man to use that skill on him.
He ducked down into a deep squat, shield foremost. He used his whole body to trip Onund, who crashed into him and flipped over, striking the trunk of the oak tree behind which he had hidden. Hrald had held his sword upright in his fist, and the tip of it caught Onund across the tops of his thighs as he flipped.
Onund lay sprawled at the foot of the oak. As Hrald neared he tried to swing a leg up, to wrap it round him and pull him down, but the slice at the top of the thigh was enough to prevent such action. Hrald stood over him, his sword pointing at Onund’s breast.
Down your man, then kill him, was the warrior’s prime dictate. Hrald’s first hesitation to do so had nearly cost him his own life.
Onund closed his eyes. He said a single word.
“Gunnulf.”
Hrald gave a cry. Instead of a deep stab to the heart, he swung his sword and hacked at Onund’s throat. The man would speak no more. Blood shot forth, pumping in a forceful spray, colouring all behind them crimson. One swing was not enough; Hrald pulled back the dripping blade and used it almost as a lash against the inert form before him.
As he hacked at the body everything he had suffered since he had been named Jarl arose, rushing up as from
a dark well deep within him: his battle with Thorfast, once friend and ally, with its most desperate of stakes; the death of Gunnulf at that same contest; the loss of good men who had been but protecting his own lands; the betrayal by his beloved wife, which had struck him to the core as an iron wedge driven by a shaft of steel splits the strongest heartwood.
Hrald could not stop the swinging of his weapon. When he finally lowered the sword for good over the bloody mass that had been a living man, his gorge rose. The smell of blood choked him. He turned away, unable to look down upon the hacked remains. He retched up bile from a stomach both empty and churning with feverish energy.
He dropped his sword, sickened and disgusted. He lifted his streaming eyes to the grey and obscure heavens above him.
His father’s words before his contest with Thorfast sounded in his ears, the assurance that his opponents were but men. You do not fear them. They fear you.
Now he feared himself, feared what he would and could do.
He raised both hands to his head. He knew he trembled, though his body ran with sweat. He blew out a breath, mind and heart racing. He must get back to his men.
He looked at the ground before him. The knife Onund had thrown at him lay harmlessly on a torn hillock of moss. The brown leathern wrapping of the grip barely showed against the mounded soil. He was victor; he must take the weapons of the vanquished. He bent and picked it up. He knew this knife. It was Gunnulf’s, and he had been wearing it the day he died. Onund must have taken it from his kit after the washing and wrapping of Gunnulf’s body.
Onund had loved Gunnulf, and just tried to kill him with his knife. His head swam, and he gave it a shake to try to clear it.
He went for the dead man’s sword, in the ferns by the oak. He left the helmet, and the ring shirt, mashed beyond reclaiming. He tore handfuls of green ferns to wipe blood, his own and Onund’s, from his hands and head. The slice on his brow was already crusted with drying blood.
He drank the contents of his water flask, dashing a little on his face, collected his sword, and recovered his helmet and spear. He set out, back through the trees to find the field, and his men.
Chapter the Fifteenth: A Prize of Great Price
CERIC worked in mournful silence with Alwin, gathering and piling forest stones over the shrouded body of Cadmar. As Ceric bent to place another rock, he saw a movement from the tail of his eye. He straightened. He had glanced more than once toward Edwin’s dead horse, to see if any Dane appeared. Any who did might be the man who killed Cadmar, looking for his body, to recover the rest of what he carried. This figure did not stop. There on the grassy field of death a man had come from somewhere, and was carrying a staff. Upon it was worked that emblem of the Danes, a raven in flight.
Ceric narrowed his eyes. Anger overtook his sorrow; the sheer waste of what lay upon that field. He would get that banner, so that no one else could fly it.
He stood up, pushed through the shrubs, and began to run after the man. The war-flag was immediate target for the wrath Ceric felt.
Past Edwin’s fallen horse were lying several spears; he had his pick. He grasped at a light throwing spear, then redoubled his speed, slowing to make perfect his throw.
The man dropped in an instant.
His spear had hit the flag-bearer squarely in the upper back. His body spilt forward, face down, arms crooked at the elbow and reaching. The pole of the war-flag was partly beneath him. Ceric knew it had been a flawless kill, yet practice led him to draw his sword as he approached.
Nearing the body he saw the man must have been yet a youth. He gave his head a shake; it could not be helped. Standard-bearers were oftentimes the minor kin of war-chiefs, and as such wore silver or carried things of value. Anything Ceric took from this one would be given to the poor in Cadmar’s name. Indeed, now that he was almost upon the body, a glint of silver shone from around the fallen youth’s neck, an amulet which had swung around to the back of his tunic. It was a large hammer of Thor.
Ceric replaced his sword in his baldric. He pulled the spear from the flag-bearer’s back and flung it, with its bloody point, aside. Then he turned the dead youth with his hand and his booted foot. As he did the head tipped back, and the war-cap upon it rolled off.
His eyes saw it was Ashild.
Ashild. He had killed the woman he loved.
The scream that pierced the air over that now-still field was one scarcely of human making.
He fell down upon his knees at her side. He wrapped his arms around her back, sliding through her warm blood. He lifted her to his chest. Her head fell back, the single plait of her fallow brown hair caught within his grasp. Her eyes of grey-blue, those eyes which he had often seen storm and laugh, were open.
He kissed those eyes, and all her face, as he held her, rocking her as if his movement would restore her own. Between his kisses he murmured her name, over and again: Ashild, Ashild, Ashild, to summon her back.
The tears falling from his eyes wet her face. They dropped upon her eyes and lips, and ran from the curves of her cheeks to her jaw.
“Ashild, Ashild,” he choked. “Ashild. My one and only love.”
He lay her over his lap, and pulled his left hand from underneath her. It was red with her lifeblood. He pressed it against his own heart, sobbing as he had never wept in his life.
Upon his smallest finger was the golden ring his grandmother had given him. He pulled it off, and took Ashild’s left hand in his own, and pressed it too against his heart. Then he threaded the golden ring upon the fourth finger of her hand.
“I wed thee, Ashild,” he whispered. “I wed thee.”
He kissed the ring, and the hand that now wore it. It was limp, and the fingers growing cool.
He brought his mouth close to her ear.
“At Four Stones, I told you I would be back for you, and that when next we met, we would bind our lives together.
“Ashild. Ashild. My wife.”
He curled over her, holding her, sheltering her, rocking her, choking on his tears and gasping for breath as he chanted her name.
Across the field a man upon the road spotted Ceric. His eyes swept the margins of the trees, mindful of any of the enemy who readied to come after the figure kneeling there. Then Worr made his way to him.
He dropped down next Ceric. He wrapped his arm across his back.
“Ceric,” said Worr.
Ceric turned his face to him, then lowered Ashild’s body so he might see who he held.
Worr’s intake of breath was followed by his stunned words. “Holy Mother of God,” he murmured. A sound came from Worr’s throat, almost a yowl of disbelief.
Ceric stared at him. He spoke, his words grief-slurred and halting. “Cadmar is dead. I wanted the raven flag.”
He turned his gaze back upon Ashild. “It was – it was Ashild who carried it.”
Worr gasped. No other response was imaginable, save that which he next offered, to cross himself. He was in the midst of the sacred, and must do so.
The two men knelt there, one holding the body of she whom he loved.
When Ceric next spoke, it was in a tone low and controlled, as if seeing the next step in a planned journey.
“Will you ride with me, Worr?” he asked. “I must take her home to Four Stones.”
“Yes, yes, I will ride with you,” Worr answered.
“There is a cairn not far up the road,” Ceric went on, in the same low and calm voice. “I think it is one of Four Stones.”
Worr nodded, soundlessly. He was reminded of the hushed and deliberate voices in the halls of the bereaved. The shock of death rendered those still living a brief span to glide through the needful duties of death. It must be so, lest they lose their reason with grief.
Worr stood. “I will tell the Prince. I saw your stallion back there, which is why I came looking for you. I will get horses and be back.”
Worr found Eadward and his remaining men down the road. In but a few words the horse-thegn of Kilton spoke of th
eir going, and the need for it, and asked for his leave. This granted, he found the great white stallion which was Ashild’s, pawing at the ground where it had been tied. A spear was nearby, standing against a tree by the animal’s head. A small shield was there, next it. He took these as well.
He got his own horse, and Ceric’s too, and made his way to where Ceric knelt. Not far away he saw Cadmar’s sword, the naked blade lying in the grass. It had fallen from the hand of a Dane, who lay on his back, an arrow in his chest. One of Eadward’s archers had struck home in the man’s breast. Worr picked up the sword. He took the dead Dane’s scabbard, left the weapon, but slid Cadmar’s own within it. He added it to the packs. Worr fastened all needful to their saddle bags. He would lead Ceric’s stallion behind his own horse. He could ride with his own spear in hand. Those of Ceric and Ashild he tied, points rearward, to the saddle rings of Ceric’s horse.
In dreamlike slowness Ceric laid Ashild upon the grass. He rose and closed his hand about the ash staff of the raven war-flag. A sleeve had been sewn into the edge of the flag, and he pulled it free from the staff. He lifted Ashild’s back, and moved her plait to tuck the narrow edge of the banner into her collar. The linen of her tunic was soaked with blood, and it wet the fresh linen through, but it would hide the hideous wound between her shoulder blades.
Ceric pulled himself upon the white stallion. Worr picked up Ashild and handed her up so she sat before Ceric on the saddle, her back to the horse’s neck. She lay astride against Ceric’s chest, her face against his shoulder, their hearts pressed together.
They made their way onto the road. Edwin and Alwin were there, preparing to mount horses. Edwin called out to his brother, who did not respond. Worr looked down at the Lord of Kilton and shook his head. The Prince had been told the story, and Edwin would soon hear it from him. Right now they must move.
They headed on a northerly route, the way Ceric had arrived. If Ceric had truly seen a cairn of Four Stones, Worr would track his way to the hall. They must go slowly for the burden Ceric bore, and in secret to avoid the remnants of those Danes they had just triumphed over. Worr would get Ceric safely there, or die in the attempt.
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