Bloodline Rising

by Katy Moran

  I am tired, so weary my head sinks low over Maelan’s neck, and I feel she’s at the end of her strength, too. Her sweat is soaking through my clouts, and it’s cold out here without a cloak. I hear the song of water rushing over rocks; if I must rest till morning, it may as well be here, where I can let Maelan drink.

  Stop, my darling, I think, tugging gentle on her mane, stop now.

  I lie down near the stream once she’s drunk her fill, so tired my every move’s slow and graceless. I’m hungry, too, but I’ll get nothing tonight. The first folk I find I must beg food from, and the way. But where will I find folk, out here in this wildwood? Despite my misery, I can’t help laughing at the thought of asking the Elmet-set for help. I draw closer to Maelan’s warm bulk, pulling dry leaves over as much of my body as I can. I wish I had a strike-a-light. I wish I had something to eat. I can see the stars through the cross-hatching of twisted branches above my head. Silvery streams of cloud drift across the night; there must be a bright moon somewhere behind all that. Near full, it must be, and I know the fight is to happen the dawn after full moon. I have not much time. Steam rises from Maelan’s heaving flanks and I throw my arm across her, saying, “I’m sorry you’re cold, I’m sorry I brought no blanket for you, nothing to rub you down with. I’m sorry.”

  My voice sounds stark alone out here, so I stop talking and listen to the sounds of the darkness instead. I have not been by myself in the wild like this for a long while, not since the last time I ran away, and then I had Thorn with me. Poor Thorn. An owl calls, hunting the night. Odd shuffling noises rise from the bracken. Shrews, maybe, or mice.

  That’s all it is.

  I wake in the time just before dawn. Maelan breathes slow and steady in her sleep, her oyster-shell-grey flank rising and falling, gentle and even. I’m not so cold as I was. The fire crackles low— Jesu! I lit no fire. I sit up, shrugging off the blanket thrown over me, and close my fingers tight around the hilt of my dagger.

  “Don’t give thaself a fit,” Edge says, lazily. “You weren’t hard to follow.” He sits hunched by a small, guttering hump of flames, poking them with a stick. Lightfoot, his horse, is nosing around in the leaf mould a handful of yards off.

  It’s not a blanket that covers me but my cloak, and I wrap it tight around my shoulders.

  Edge tosses the stick into the flames. “Some messenger came from the Wolf Folk just as I was off, too. Crashed in through the gate like a storm on the wing, he did.”

  Who was the messenger? Goodlord and his men must be long on their way to the battle-place. Why would his court send word to Repedune now? A full night of it they’ve had, at Repedune-hall, what with Mildreth’s brat – Cenry’s child – and Edge and me leaving, and now a messenger, too. I don’t like that at all – what can it mean? Have the Wolf Folk backed out of the fight? Or do they know aught that Wulf does not? Maybe the fight-place has changed, or it’s a trick, and Wulf rides into an ambush. But why should I care what happens to him? He betrayed us, Edge and me.

  Edge reaches into one of the saddlebags sitting on the ground beside him, and tosses me a ring of twice-baked bread and an apple with the skin just beginning to wrinkle. I crunch the hard bread, spraying a cloud of crumbs. Then he throws the leather bag at me, the one Wulf left with us, the one Edge swore he should never lay even so much as a fingertip on.

  “Why do you laugh?” I say. “And what did you bring that for? I want nothing from that traitor.”

  Edge just laughs again. “Do you open it, then you’ll see.”

  I wipe breadcrumbs from my face with the back of my hand and tug at the bag’s drawstring, tipping its load into my outstretched palm.

  It’s my ring, my father’s ring, and a key with a long handle kinked like a dead adder. Garric made that when he was a young lad, and always folk laugh at him for it – the key to the barn.

  I pick up my ring and loop it onto the leather string of green glass beads at my throat, tying it up again. Why aren’t I glad to have it back after all this time?

  I was a fool to use it, that day on the slave boat. I should have kept the cursed thing hidden in my rags, and I would never have delivered myself up to the Devil’s Cub. I feel empty, numb, like a crimson-dyed egg with all its insides blown out for an Easter gift. I feel as though I might crumble into nothing.

  “Don’t you see?” Edge says, grinning. “Wulf didn’t betray us after all. He knew it wasn’t worth riling Penda, so he just locked us up and gave us the way out.”

  I shrug, getting to my feet as I bite into the apple. “Maybe Wulf betrayed us,” I say, swallowing a sweet mouthful, “and maybe he did not, but Thorn told no lie. Did you know of this? How Elfgift could sit there among them I’ll never know.” And I’ll never know, either, how Thorn’s borne it, all these years, knowing it was Wulf’s army who orphaned her.

  “Your grandmother’s got her wits about her, that’s why,” Edge says, roughly. “And I did know, if you want the truth, and when I see Thorn again I’ll slap the daft bitch’s face for telling you.”

  “Was she well, when you left?” I search through Edge’s saddlebags. He’s brought my bow and a quiver for me, too. He’s some sense, at least. I sling both over my shoulder and snatch out a bag of oats, shoving it under Maelan’s nose. She nibbles the edge of the bag first, as she always does, then dips her head, near dragging it from my grasp.

  Edge looks at me a moment, then sighs, as if he were going to say something but has changed his mind. “Asleep. She’s trouble, that girl. Cenry was a fool, mucking about with Mildreth when he was betrothed to Thorn: she’ll make him pay dear for it, and more times over than he can count. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Kicking out the fire – what does it look like? Are you coming, or do I go alone? They’re a day and a half ahead of us already.”

  I’ve an uneasy feeling we’re being watched – followed, even – but when I listen, I hear only four heartbeats: the horse-folk’s and ours. So there’s no one hidden. But still the back of my neck prickles. A lone oak leaf, fire-coloured, falls from a branch high above our heads, and a wren darts off through the thatch of trees. I must get away from here; I must move on.

  Edge gets to his feet, shaking his head. “Cai, what do you mean?”

  “You’ve had your fill,” I tell Maelan, unhooking the nosebag. I mount in one leap – a year ago I should not have been able to do that. I learned something, after all, living in that nest of liars, killers and traitors. I learned a few things.

  I squint up at the sky through the tangle of branches – it’s a drab day, but by the slant of the light I can put the sun just behind my right shoulder, as Wulf taught me. I know the chosen place is a few days’ ride north-west of Repedune as the crow flies, and that both sides shall meet when the moon’s full. Sooner or later I’m bound to pass some dwelling, some traveller, and I’ll learn the way to Winwaed-river.

  Edge is at my side – I don’t think I’ve ever seen him move so quick.

  “Wisht, wisht,” he says to Maelan, patting her muzzle. “Tha’ll go nowhere yet, whatever he may bid you.” He looks up at me. “Cai, you aren’t thirteen summers old. I’ll take tha north to my father’s hall, but over my dead body shall you ride to that battle-place.”

  “You’ll not take me anywhere,” I tell him. I sound chilly and dead, like Thorn did. “I went, you followed me – I did not ask you to. I’ll find that battle-field or I’ll die trying. You can come with me, or you may ride north for all I care; you choose. Take your hand off Maelan – she’s getting edgy.”

  Edge looks at me hard.

  “God take your eyes, Cai,” he says. But he mounts up, anyway, and we ride on.

  Winwaed-river

  THIS MORNING we came to the shore of a great stretch of woodland where hazy hills swept out before us. A tumbled mass of green and grey they were, stretching as far as I could see, shrouded in long curls of mist. A flock of geese soared above, arrowhead-shaped, and I wondered how they knew to fly like that, and how the
y chose who should take the lead, and who should follow behind.

  “The fells,” Edge said. “Ah, but it feels well to be back on high ground. Seven summers, it’s been, since I saw hill country.”

  “The woods are afire,” I told him. “Can you not smell it?” The stink of burning wood hung light on the air. “Not far from here, either.”

  Edge shook his head. “Na,” he said. “It’ll be charcoal-burners, most likely. It’s too damp for the trees to burn alone. Come, let’s ask if there’s one that knows the way to the Winwaed – we can’t be far now. Either that or we’re lost.”

  I prayed we were not. If we came but a day too late…

  We followed the smoke and found the charcoal-burner, all right, minding his great heap of wood. The mound was a big one – it would have been higher than my head had I been on foot. There was so much mud plastered over the criss-crossed pile of branches and leaves that it looked like a great, upturned clay bowl. The burner was plastering mud over a crack leaking smoke when we came, and at first he did not look round, even when Edge called to him.

  “The path to Winwaed-river?” he said then, cackling. An older man I’ve never seen – bent and crabbed with age, he was, with wisps of grey hair flying free from the wool rags bound around his head. His hands were marked with dark, reddish blotches, his fingers thin and fleshless, but his eyes were bright and swift, bluer than the sky above the City of the Rising Moon. “I’ll tell you, all right, but you’d as well turn your nags and ride the other way. It’s a great fight, that one, and your mothers shall miss you when you’re dead, boys.” He cackled again, and could hardly speak for laughing, though I know not what he thought so funny. But he told us the way, all right.

  “I’d lay you my knife he was touched in the head,” Edge muttered as we rode away.

  “Just as long as he gave us the right path, I don’t care.”

  “Cai, you may kill as many Mercians as you please, and it shan’t change the past.”

  I shrugged, saying nothing. Edge does not understand that I cannot help myself. I am alight with rage; it bears me ever onward, as though a taut rope pulls me faster and faster towards my destiny. I cannot stop now.

  I only wish I did not have this sense that someone follows us. When I listen close, when I let myself become nothing, one with the woods, one with the hills, I hear a pounding of hoofs as though a great drum beats, sending shudders through the warp and weft of the earth. But ever the sound fades, as if it’s something I hear in the tatters of a dream on waking.

  And if I told Edge that a lone sparrowhawk has flown overhead for three days now, he would but laugh at me. Do not be a fool, he would say. It’s not the same bird. Hawk-kind never leave their air-marches. Tha does but fancy it.

  In my mind I hear little Aranrhod speaking of the Halfling Witch that evening after the hunt, when Wulf told tales of him and Tasik: He saw into the hearts of horses and men. I remember Anwen, too, saying, It ever seemed to me that the hawk saw my brothers coming, and told him. I think, too, of that long-ago day in the City of the Rising Moon, running sweat-soaked through the streets till I came to the harbour, and always the same buzzard circling above. And then Tasik found me.

  Don’t be a fool, I tell myself. He’s not here. How could he be? Wanting Tasik won’t make him come.

  We’re in rolling, hilly country, scattered about with grey shoulders of rock. The sky above boils and spits down rain. The greet sweep of woodland is long left behind; now only a handful of hunched-up trees clutch up at the clouds. I’m glad Edge brought my cloak, but even so, the rain soaks in, dampening my tunic and chilling me all the way through.

  Still I see that wretched sparrowhawk. Sometimes I do not spy it for hours, but sure enough, there it is now, making loops in the grey, heavy sky above, and the skin on the back of my neck does prickle.

  Now I hear it: a noise like a thousand silver spoons falling onto a stone floor, a clashing of metal on metal, very faint. There’s a low, bloody roaring, too – it sounds like the cry of a huge beast. A deep rumbling shakes up through the ground as though the Great Serpent that binds the world shakes her shining coils, unwinding in her deep, secret place, ready to strike.

  I glance across at Edge, who reins in Lightfoot and waits a moment, his face still and quiet, shining with streams of rainwater. The light’s fading. There is but a sliver of this day left, and so much shall be changed by the end of it, one way or another.

  “There,” he says at last. “We’ve found our fight. Ist tha cheerful now?”

  So we are not too late, after all. “Come,” I tell him. “We’ve not many hours left, by the look of the sky.”

  Edge reins in again, and reaches out, putting his hand on my arm. “Do you hear this, Cai. If we come apart, make for the Northumbrian shield-wall and stay in the back of it. Shoot as many Mercians as you please with your bow, but do nothing foolish. It’s not for brats your age to do aught but stick at the back and throw stones. Do you swear?”

  He does but feel guilty for coming with me, for not forcing me somehow to ride safe up to the north. “Well enough,” I say. “I swear.”

  Edge should know better than to make me swear to anything.

  I am a liar, after all.

  We ride on, picking our way up the hill. On its crest we look down to see the river Winwaed swollen and huge, spreading silver across the bottom of the valley, just as the charcoal-burner said we should. Willow trees rise up from great swathes of floodwater.

  “She’s burst her banks,” Edge says. Rain drips off the end of his nose. “By Christ, we’ll be in mud up to our knees.”

  I say nothing.

  The air beats now with the sound of iron clashing against iron, and the roar of men’s voices raised in the fury of the blood-rage that settles like a red mist when men do fight. At least that’s what they tell of in the songs. To me it sounds more like they cry out in fear, and in pain.

  All I care about is that we are not too late.

  “It’s in the next valley, then,” Edge says. He speaks level and calm, as though he talks of a deer we’re tracking, and not a great battle that might mean the end of us. “Best to stay on the high ground.” We stare at the rounded hillside, listening.

  This clashing of metal, this bloody screaming is like nothing I’ve heard before. It’s a long way from the dusty knockabouts with wooden swords in the yard at Repedune. It’s a long way from drinking cider in the courtyard, throwing spears at old sacks stuffed with straw. No one laughs here. And the smell: the stink of blood and dung near makes me choke.

  “It’s like Blood-month,” Edge says, all quiet, and he’s right. It smells as it will in Repedune when a few more weeks have passed, and the beasts will be killed for winter, and the yard shall run with blood.

  I ride on, and Edge follows me till we are side by side. My heart thunders so loud I wonder he doesn’t hear it; for a moment its beat drowns out the clashing and shouting of the fight, and I wonder that all the men in the field do not hear it, too.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Edge says. I wonder if he means him or me? “These big fights, they’re all set out like a game of Fox and Geese. If tha stays at the back, tha shan’t come to harm—”

  I feel it before I see it. A great, crashing rumbling that runs through every sliver of my blood and bone.

  “Edge!” I cry – and here they are, a stream of horsemen rounding the top of the hill, their faces scrawled over with swirling blue Briton clan-tattoos, bloodstained, ragged hair streaming behind them, spears flying. One has a sword he swings above his head – it shines like the sun on water and I think how fair it looks.

  I hear Edge calling my name, but when I look round I cannot see him, just this crowd of horsemen streaming over the hilltop. The battle’s broken, the shield-walls scattered. It’s a raging dogfight now and I’m in the middle of it. Edge is nowhere. Where has he gone? A throwing-spear flies by, a finger’s width from my head. The air’s thick with screaming, with battle-cries, with the groaning of t
he fallen.

  I crouch low over Maelan’s neck, whispering, “Easy, my darling,” and her ears are flattened back onto her neck with fear. But there is no time to be afraid. “Come, come,” I say to her softly, squeezing with my thighs till we go faster, faster, and we are crashing down the hill at a gallop, and it’s all I can do to keep my seat, and I’m cursing myself for not bringing a saddle at least.

  The valley boils with men and death. It is like one of Leofric’s tales of hell’s deepest pit. There are so many fallen, and they are trampled on, dead or alive, by horse-folk and men alike. The darkening sky’s thick with arrows; they rain down with the water from the sky and I’m gripped, frozen with fear. I’ve never seen rain like this: it as if the heavens have cracked open. I was a fool to have come here, a fool to have dragged Edge into this, and now I have lost him and—

  Maelan lets out a shriek – I have never heard her scream before and the sound freezes my guts, and I’m falling, sliding off her back. I tangle as I fall in the shaft of a spear that sticks from her flank, and hit the ground with my cloak torn. It is not the earth I lie on but the twisted corpse of a man staring up at me. His eyes are brown like a field in winter. I’m covered in blood and I leap to my feet. His belly has been torn open, and the air’s thick with the scent of human dung and blood. But Maelan, oh Maelan, she’s lying on her side, her eyes wide with fear.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder and wheel around, clutching at my dagger. A man with a pockmarked face jams his spear into Maelan’s side; it unfolds slow before me – her flesh half swallows the shaft – the point must be deep in the mud by now. She shudders, and is still.

  “What game do you play at, boy?” the man says to me, roughly. “Tha should be aback of the shield-wall, whatever side you’re on.”

  “My horse—” I say, foolish with grief for her. She is dead; Maelan is dead and the fault’s mine.