Bloodline

by Katy Moran

  He pressed himself against the fence, feeling the rough wood against his shoulder blades. He could hear the dogs breathing, feel the rhythm of their heartbeats, swifter than those of the sleeping guards. Melyor waited silently beside him. He’d have to be quick: it was one thing to find a boy skulking around the gate, but there would be no excuse for a boy and a horse. There would be another head on a pole by the gate. The British boy’s and his sister’s were there now, still trailing long black hair. He found he had to look at them, absorb the horror of it, to stoke his courage. Penda had to be stopped.

  He closed his eyes; one of the dog-heartbeats grew louder till he could feel it himself, the blood pounding in his ears as if it were his. Then, the familiar tug in the pit of his stomach as dog-senses grew more acute and his own senses were left behind in the shell of his body. He could smell fresh blood. He felt the dog’s thoughts.

  Old chief two-legs has mauled some of his pack; left bits of them just out of reach. Two-legs who leaves meat is asleep, him and his two brothers; all snoring like cubs. No good. And there’s another, too, a cub-one, and flying-tail. Should not be there. No. Flying-tail flicks back her ears. She hears.

  Lie down and sleep, Essa thought. Never mind the cub-one; let him go. He felt the dog’s confusion and unease, almost as if it were aware of his cuckoo-like presence in its body.

  I must call, it thought. Call for more two-legs.

  The smell of blood grew fainter. Just let the cub-one go. Then, in a heartbeat, Essa was back inside his own body, cursing himself, wishing there was someone who could teach him how to do this properly. It was one thing for his spirit to slip into the body of a dog, quite another to steer the dog’s free will to his own course. It was like being in a boat, but having no control over the sails; he was just pushed by the wind, by the force of the beast’s own being.

  He slumped forwards, grinding his fingers into the dirt, thwarted. He had to get back to the village, and he was not going to be stopped by a couple of mangy hounds. He got up, leaning back against the wall. Fenrir. Where was she? If she called, maybe they would go to her. He let his spirit drift again – he could feel her presence, somewhere out there in the marsh.

  Come on, girl. Call to them, call to your brothers and sisters by the gate, make them run with you, hunt with them.

  Then, faintly, he heard her answering cry.

  Yes!

  One by one, the three dogs slipped through the open gate, leaving the sleeping guardsmen alone at their posts. He mouthed silent thanks to Fenrir for calling to them.

  It felt good to ride Melyor. Better even than sneaking past the sleeping guards. They would pay with their lives if Penda found out, Essa was sure, and he felt a flash of guilt. Then again, his life would be forfeit too, if Penda ever discovered what he was about to do… Despite all this, riding Melyor was better than knowing he had got clear of the fortress and that there was nothing but the marsh between him and the village. He was free.

  They trotted silently through the sparse woodland surrounding Penda’s fortress, drawing closer to the marsh. Essa listened carefully; he could hear the high keening howl of hunting-dogs in full chase, and he was glad Fenrir had some pack-brothers to run with; he just hoped the dogs would not suffer for it later, and that he would not have to call Fenrir back when he returned. There was hardly enough time as it was, and he wanted to make sure she was outside the gates at dawn, ready to join him and Wulf on their journey west.

  He dug in his heels and Melyor surged forwards. He clutched at her mane as marsh-water flew up at his face. He breathed fond words into her ears, and then sat back, gripping with his legs. There had been no time to saddle her, but he knew he would be safe. One of his first memories was of Cai propping him up on Melyor’s bare back, walking alongside the horse as she carried him safely. It felt as if he were joined to her, even after all these years.

  “Go on, girl,” he whispered. “Go faster for me, just this once. I’ll never ask again.”

  They tore across the marshy flatland, stars blurring in the sky above, cold wind whipping at his face, and it felt as if the huge dome of night above was absorbing his anger. These men might think they could play with him, moving him about like a goose-piece on a gaming board, but he was not beaten yet. He would not be part of their game. Whatever that might be. Who did Cai think he was, leaving him like that? What was he doing? He could’ve come to get me any time. He just didn’t want to. For years he had thought that his father was dead, and nothing could be worse than that. But he was wrong. This was far worse.

  He had to get back to the village.

  He slowed Melyor to a canter, watching her sides heave as the willows started to thin out on the Anglian side of the marsh. He let her drink from the reedy water as they approached dry land, and dug in his heels again when he caught sight of the village walls through the trees. His stomach surged when he saw Egric’s standard, the running wolf, hanging limply from the flag mast. No need to ask what was the penalty for treason, for disobeying a ring-giver, for running off to do the bidding of an enemy king. It would be far worse than being exiled, sent into the wildwood as Egric had threatened. In his mind’s eye, he saw the British boy slumping forward into a pool of his own blood, heard his sister’s dying curse torn off, rising to a ragged scream. He just hoped it would be quick, when it came. A thrust of cold metal between his ribs, his heart bursting. If it comes, he told himself angrily. It might not happen. Don’t think on what might not happen.

  There was no choice. He had to do it. He had to go with Wulf, or Cai would face questions he would not be able to answer without losing his life. Egric would just have to understand that there had been no choice. Was that a grey sliver of dawn he could see on the eastern horizon?

  “I’m sorry, girl,” he whispered. “But I’ve got to be quick.”

  Melyor obeyed his touch, but he slowed her again as they neared the alder coppice. Under the cover of the trees, he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, hoping Cole or Red would be awake. Melyor shifted beneath him, as if she were eager to move again.

  “Wait, girl,” he whispered. “Easy, easy.”

  Moments dragged by. No sound came from within the great earthen walls. He whistled again, his heart thudding. If he didn’t get back to the camp by dawn, if they discovered Melyor was missing, what would Penda do? Penda wasn’t stupid: he knew Essa hadn’t arrived in the camp with Cai. He had guessed. He was playing some kind of game, just as Cai was himself.

  Maybe Penda would kill Cai. Did he already know he was a traitor?

  Feeling desperate, Essa lifted his fingers to his lips to whistle a third time, when he heard something: footsteps, someone running lightly across the yard to the gate. Hild? No. She didn’t know the whistle signal. Essa dismounted and, leaving Melyor in the alder coppice, scrambled up the mound to the gate. It creaked open, leaving a tiny crack.

  It was Lark.

  He stood there, the breath torn from his body by the sight of her. Her face had changed, the coldness gone. Lark had come to life again before him, as if she had just been released from some elvish binding.

  “Essa!” She slid through the small gap and wrapped her arms tightly around him, squeezing the breath from his chest. “Where have you been?” she cried.

  For a moment, she was all. Just Lark, and the heat of her body, the scent of her skin making him feel drunk. There was nothing else in the world. He fought the urge to lean down and whisper in her ear, “Come away with me,” and ride out into the wide world with her in the saddle before him. But he knew he could not.

  Then he wanted to laugh with relief that after all these years of not speaking, of not even looking at each other, she was here in his arms. But everything now depended on silence. “Ssh.” He stepped back, clutching at her hands. “Listen. I can’t stay. I got caught.”

  “What? Who by?”

  “You won’t believe it: Cai. He was there, with Penda.”

  Lark’s face was pale and frightened in the silver
y darkness. “Cai – your father? What was he doing in Penda’s camp? I thought he was Seobert’s man. Essa, I thought he must’ve been dead by now, he never—”

  “Ssh. He’s a spy – for both sides. I don’t know who he’s really loyal to, but he’s there. Now look, Penda’s sending me away with his son – to Powys. Cai just let him do it. We leave at dawn.” He gripped Lark’s fingers even tighter, to silence her. “If I don’t go, Penda will doubt me. I need to leave here straight away, only you’ve got to help me. I need—”

  “But Egric, Hild – they’ve been waiting up all night, and all last night, too.”

  Essa shook his head impatiently. “When I’ve gone, tell them Penda’s got a camp full of fighting men, and he’s mustering his troops. He’s marrying one of his sons to the king of Powys’s daughter – so he doesn’t get attacked from the west while all his men are riding out to the east, to here.”

  Lark’s eyes grew bright. “Here? Oh, no—”

  “I’m going to try and stop it, I don’t know what I’ll do, but something. Tell Egric if they don’t rouse Seobert to fight or pick another king then we’re finished. And tell him I’m sorry for going, but I’ve no choice. I’ll be loyal to him, I swear.”

  “You’re not being, though,” whispered Lark. “You’re being loyal to Cai. But why should Egric have chosen you, anyway, that’s what I can make no sense of. I had such a misgiving, when he gave you that ring—”

  “It’s to do with that day in the beech coppice,” Essa said quickly. “When I killed that man. I’m sure of it, but I don’t know how. Egric knows something about me. He knows—” He wanted to tell her about Egric speaking to him in British, calling him Aesc, son of Cai, but he felt sure the sky had lightened already. “I must go, Lark. It’s not about being loyal to Egric or Cai – I want to find out what I am.” He stepped away, letting go her hands.

  “What you are? Essa, don’t talk nonsense. You’re just yourself.”

  “I know that,” he said, wanting to tell her about his spirit-journey, but there was no time – he would be lucky to get back before he was missed. “It’s only that Egric’s using me for some reason, I’m sure of it, and I want to know what kind of game he’s playing. Now I must go.”

  “Essa, be careful.”

  “I will, and you too. And tell Cole to look after you.”

  “I’ll look after him!” She smiled unhappily, her face wet with tears.

  Essa held her tight, and saw that the grey line on the eastern horizon had widened just slightly. Not long till daylight. He knew that when he let her go, it would hurt as much as it had done the day she walked away from him in the stable, the day he had taken a man’s life. But there was no choice; he had to go. Would he get back in time? “Listen,” he said. “I need you to get something for me – my sword, the one with the black and silver scabbard. Can you get it? Run!”

  Lark looked at him gravely, then pulled away and ran back into the village. Essa sprinted down the slope into the coppice, where Melyor was waiting, and swung himself up on to her back, then trotted back to the gate. He heard the sound of hinges creaking as Lark let herself into the smithy where the weapons were stored, then creaking again as she let herself out. He imagined her standing on tiptoe in the darkness, silently lifting the sword off the two nails banged into the wall. Then, after what seemed like ages, she was back, handing it to him with silent misery etched across her face. She offered up the sword, and the silver dragons chasing each other around the scabbard glinted in the moonlight. He leant down to take it from her, his fingers closing around the familiar shape of the handle as he buckled the Silver Serpent to his belt.

  They clasped hands briefly.

  Lark looked at him, a strange, hard light in her eyes. “Go,” she said. “Go on. And swear you’ll come back.”

  He nodded, unable to answer her, and went.

  Cai was waiting for him outside the stable when he got back. He squinted up at the pink stripe of light in the eastern sky. “Cutting it fine, are you not?” he said.

  “Oh, hold your talk.” Exhausted, Essa dismounted, the muscles in his thighs screaming after the blistering ride across the marsh and back. “I could hardly not go, could I?” He led Melyor into the stable, not bothering to see if Cai would follow.

  “It’s dawn.” Cai stood in the doorway of Melyor’s stall, watching as she dipped her great roan head to the water trough. “You’d better go and break your fast. It’s a long journey. I’ll look after her.”

  “What’s your little game, anyway?” Essa spun around to face him, whispering harshly. “I thought you were meant to be loyal to the Wolf Folk! What are you doing here, getting all friendly with Egric’s worst enemy? You’re hardly singing songs.” He snorted. “Some scop you are. Who are you really working for – Seobert or Penda? You’re just a traitor.”

  Cai smiled. “How can I be a traitor, dear child, when I have no king?”

  “What?” Essa stared at him, then laughed. “Because you’re British?”

  Cai raised his eyes heavenward, a faint mocking smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “I have one Lord, and he rules them all. When the day comes, I will be judged by Him alone.”

  Essa shook his head in disbelief. “Well, if I’m dead before the year’s out, I hope your Lord knows who to blame.”

  Cai looked at him with an expression of faint surprise, as if he thought he had been alone in the stable, and had only just realized Essa was standing there. “Well, go on, then,” he said. “Go and get something to eat – you won’t last the day if you don’t. It’s a long way to Powys.”

  West through the wildwood of Mercia

  ESSA leant back in the saddle, feeling the reins rasping through his palm. He held them loosely, and closed his eyes.

  They were in the middle of the greenwood, the great forest that stretched from the Anglian marshlands to the foothills of the western mountains, and he was looking for a bird. A finger of breeze teased his hair, brushing across his forehead. Far above his head, branches danced in the wind, filled with rich sap aching to break free of winter’s frozen clutch. In the distance, he heard the coughing bark of a roe deer, and knew Fenrir would soon start thirsting for a hunt, and a kill. But not yet, my girl. Not yet.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw a song thrush perching high in the branches of an old beech: oyster-shell pale she was, splattered with dark speckles. The song thrush raised her head, the inside of her beak a splash of flame-bright orange. Her call rang out across the forest, and Essa’s heart wanted to burst from his chest with the joy of it because winter was losing its battle with the sun. The earth was slowly warming as the Aesir breathed life into it again.

  He felt the swift tug in his belly as his spirit left his body, and then, looking down, Essa saw folk on the forest floor – two boys. He felt the stretch as the song thrush spread her wings, darting from branch to branch, willing her to fly free of the trees so he could see where they were. Go, go. But the song thrush just shot down to the ground, knocked a snail off a log and started tapping it against the mouldy bark.

  Opening his eyes and tweaking the reins, Essa cursed. They’d been lost for at least a day. He had been sure it would work, that he would be able to slip inside a bird and fly up above the trees and get some sense of which way they were heading. But it was not like with Myfanwy, who he had trained for years to come to him for food; the thrush was wild.

  They were lost. They should have been on the right track: they had ridden for twelve days with the sun at their backs in the morning, and then straight towards it as it set. But they were still deep in the middle of the forest, Essa was sure. The trees were woven together as thickly as ever. And what was the use of being able to slip the shackles of his body and fly with the birds if all they wanted to do was eat snails?

  “It’s that hound slowing us down,” said Wulf, laughing. “I can see why your father told you to get rid of it.”

  Fenrir had appeared just after they’d ridden out of the fort, and Wul
f had swallowed Essa’s lying explanation without question. Nothing seemed to ruffle him – he was content to ride about the forest, getting nowhere, but it was starting to drive Essa mad. The longer he was away, the worse it would be with Egric when he got back.

  “Don’t talk foolish,” he said. “Fenrir won’t slow us down – she’s a deerhound. She’s fast enough. And if we went any quicker, we’d tire the horses.”

  Wulf snorted derisively. Essa ignored him. Had the sun really been at their backs each morning? In truth, the canopy of trees was so thick Essa could not swear to it. They might have ridden too far to the north or south. There was no way of knowing. If only he had Myfanwy here, or could get inside the right bird, one that would fly high enough to break out of the trees and allow him to see where they were. But that could take days. Days and days, and Wulf would start to wonder what was wrong with him.

  What was the point in being different from everyone else, of having this strange gift, if he could not use it? He wished now he had told Cai the truth back in Penda’s camp. Onela had been right about Cai; he had some kind of elf-gift too, Essa was sure. The way he had of drawing out your most secret thoughts was no ordinary skill, and there was a strange light in his black eyes. Maybe Cai would have known how Essa could learn to command the will of wild creatures. Perhaps the skill had come from his mother’s family, but it was no good wishing she were here to teach him the way of it.

  So we’re stuck. We’ll just have to keep going.

  Penda’s men and Cai had told them the great forest would start to thin by late morning on the tenth day. Then they would be out of Mercia, with the wide plains of the Magonsaete, the border people, between them and the western kingdoms of the British. They should have been able to see purple mountains on the horizon when they came to the wood shore: the gates to Powys. Essa had tried all the tricks he knew; cutting markers into tree trunks with his knife to make sure they were not going around in circles (they were not), keeping the north star on their right-hand side (useless: the night sky was full of cloud, and always hidden by the trees). Nothing worked.