by Katy Moran
“Oh, well,” muttered Wulf. “The longer the delay, the better. She’s probably going to be some pox-faced toad with a face like a dog chewing a wasp. Let’s slow down even more, and Eiludd Powys can keep his wretched daughter a few days longer. I hope she’s not a complaining, sickly wench with too much religion. I don’t understand you Christians. What a miserable death for the son of a king, getting nailed to a cross. Why did your Lord let such a thing happen to his own child?”
Essa felt the colour flood to his face. “It was for our wrongdoing,” he said. “Jesus died for our sins, so that we might have the chance to get into heaven when we die.”
“What’s heaven?”
Essa struggled to remember. What Cai had once taught him he had forgotten. “It – it is not hell, which is torment and punishment and misery.”
Wulf shrugged. “I’ll place my trust in the Aesir,” he said. “There’s enough misery in life without having to concern yourself with it after you’re dead.”
But Essa was no longer paying him any heed. “It’s not right,” he said. “We should be near the western edge of the wood by now.” The moon had been just a silver hook in the sky when they left Penda’s fortress, and now it was almost full: round and cold when he glimpsed it between the branches.
“Maybe we are,” Wulf said. “It’s that dark, we might be anywhere. We should stop soon, fill our bellies and get some sleep.”
“We’re not at the wood shore,” Essa replied. The air was still thick with the musty reek of rotting leaf mould: if they were near the wood shore that smell would have faded, stirred up with the sharp, heathery scent of grassy moorland and the distant, cold smell of the mountains. It had been a long time since Essa was in high country, but he remembered the clean, clear edge to the air. No, they were still in the heart of the forest, but there was something different. What was it? He was tired and his thoughts trickled slowly through his mind like stiff honey on a cold day.
“There’s no really big trees,” he whispered, more to himself than to Wulf. “This is new woodland. Someone was here, they cleared the land and then when they left, the trees grew back.” A prickly feeling settled across Essa’s shoulders, as if someone was watching him and he could not see who they were. He remembered that day in the beech coppice with Lark, and the man who had come to kill him.
“Wulf, we must get out of this place now.” He struggled to keep his voice steady. Fear had him by the throat, and he could barely breathe.
“Ah, do you stop jumping and fretting like a girl,” said Wulf as he guided Balder, his white gelding, through the lattice of birch, elder, rowan and ash. “You’re like an unbroken horse, you are, frighting at shadows.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe Essa was just being foolish, flapping and squawking like a chicken. Fenrir let out a small, purring growl. He glanced down at her: her ears were flattened against her head, her gait stiff-legged, as if she had just caught the scent of another roe deer, far away in the trees, and was about to run for it.
Essa listened, ears alert for a cracking twig, a footfall, a sharp drawing-in of breath – anything that might betray an unseen watcher. Nothing. Although it was not even very cold, he shivered. Ahead of him, Balder looked like a ghost-horse, Wulf just a smudge of darkness on her back, partially concealed by a criss-cross pattern of thin, whippy branches.
There was something wrong, he knew it.
And then Wulf turned around to face him, his teeth shining in the darkness. “Look,” he said. “Stones. Walls of stone, over there in the clearing. Oh, the air must be thick with spirits around here.”
The ruined buildings loomed up out of the trees like trading-boats Essa had once watched sail out of the mist on to a beach in Rheged. Beside him, he heard Wulf whistle in admiration.
“Stow your gab, will you?” Essa’s shoulders were still prickling.
“There’s no need to be afraid of stones and ghosts,” said Wulf cheerfully. “They can’t hurt. Come on, let’s have a look.”
“No!”
But Wulf had already dug his heels into Balder’s sides, and the tired horse moved on. Essa whispered an apology to his own horse and followed, whistling for Fenrir.
It had once been a great hall. Now it was a ruin. Trees grew where the roof used to be, and shutterless windows gaped out of crumbling walls. Wooden buildings rotted within the courtyard, as if people had tried to carry on living there, rebuilding and pretending everything was normal, but without the knowledge or the desire to repair the sprawling stone house. Essa felt his stomach tighten and warm spit flooded his mouth.
Wulf dismounted, leaving Balder standing. Cursing under his breath, Essa followed him. He whistled softly; Fenrir turned and padded towards him, her head hanging low. She was tired, too. As he ran his hand along her knobbly spine, he felt her sides heaving. Her ears were still flattened against her skull, and she let out another low, rumbling growl.
Wulf clutched at Essa’s sleeve as they approached the silent house. “Look,” he whispered. “It’s all blackened and burnt. There must have been a great fire.” He put his hand to the wall and it came away dark with age-old soot.
Essa nodded. It must have been a huge blaze, turning the woodland surrounding the house to ash on the wind. The trees here now were young: no more than a few generations of growth. What of those who had survived the fire and stayed, building shelter from the ruins? Had they just died off, one by one? Had they taken to the sea, or chosen the route across the mountains to Powys, as he was doing now?
“Wulf, we should leave this place.” He turned to glance over his shoulder at Balder and Grani, who were nosing in the undergrowth for something to eat. “It’s bad here. Fenrir’s unsettled, too.”
“We’ll move on at dawn, get our bearings straight,” said Wulf, stepping lightly through a gap in the wall. “We can’t be that lost.”
Essa felt the cold shiver settle about his shoulders like a frozen mantle of deerskin.
Someone watched yet no one was there.
A quick, hot thrill of excitement flared in his belly as he followed Wulf into the ruins, but he was still uneasy, unable to shake off the feeling they were not alone. For a moment, Fenrir sat back on her haunches, barking twice, but followed when she saw he was not coming back, catching up in a couple of long strides. He glanced over his shoulder as they clambered over a fallen stretch of wall, but saw only the horses.
“Look at this!” hissed Wulf, standing in the centre of a courtyard flanked on three sides by the walls of the rambling villa, and on the fourth by a roofless outbuilding. The stones shone pale under the moonlight, like ghosts. Essa could not picture living in a house of stone, so cold and unforgiving.
Give me a wooden hall any day, he thought, with the tales of the Aesir carved into the beams and dragons with golden eyes watching from the roof, and the wide doors open to the sun.
Rickety shacks rose drunkenly from within the walls of the villa, poking up through the gap left by the collapsed roof. Wind and rain had torn away the plaster, leaving a criss-cross of lathing open like the exposed ribs of a dead sheep Essa had once seen rotting at the bottom of Long Acre.
“How long do you think people stayed, I mean, afterwards?” Wulf said. “Look at the floor! This place must’ve been a fair sight.”
Essa looked down: they were standing on a school of playing dolphins, laid out in hundreds of tiles barely bigger than his thumbnail. How long would that take to do, he wondered? He couldn’t imagine anyone back in the village having the time to spare. In the centre of the courtyard a young woman, hewn from solid rock, held a basin above her head. The large bowl at her feet was still stained with lichen, the water long since dried up and gone. Every detail of her face was perfect, her eyes downcast, as if she were about to look up at any moment.
Then Fenrir barked, again and again till it sounded like a howl.
Essa grabbed Wulf’s arm, glancing around for her. A moment ago, she’d been right beside him – now she was nowhere to be seen. The s
till night air was filled with her voice. “Look, we’ve got to get ourselves gone. Fenrir’s seen something.”
“Come on, don’t be foolish,” said Wulf. “She’s just howling at the moon. Our dogs do it all the time.”
“She’s not!” Essa tugged him back towards the horses, calling, “Fenrir, Fenrir, come, girl, come!”
But Wulf was still staring at the fountain, at the beautiful stone girl with her empty stone bowl. “It’s like elf magic.” He drew in a deep breath. “I’ve not seen anything like it. Could we lift her off the base, do you think? She’d make a fine gift for—”
Essa felt the blow before it connected with the back of his skull; the quick rush of air displaced by a heavy weapon, then the burst of pain. Before he fell, he saw Wulf crumple to the floor beside him, and dark figures rose on all sides, drifting from the shadows of the ruined buildings.
Outlaws
ESSA lay on his back, unable to sleep. The blankets were full of stones, and they moved beneath him.
“Stop moving,” he muttered. He tried to fling out an arm, and realized his hands were bound. His shoulders blazed with pain as he was dragged along the ground, and he felt a warm, thin line of blood trickle down his right arm, where the skin had been torn from his wrist by a rope. The air was thick with the baying of a hound, a wild, bloodthirsty sound. His heel caught on a tussock and above his head someone swore.
“That cursed dog, why don’t we just kill it?”
“You try, she looks like she could have you for breakfast, my friend.”
Fenrir. Where was she?
He forced his eyes open. The back of his head throbbed and pulsed, and greenish spots blurred his sight. Someone was hauling him along like a dead sheep being taken out to hang. He drew a deep breath, praying his captors had not noticed he was awake. The long sword still hung at his belt, dragging through the leaf mould, bouncing over knotted tree roots protruding from the soil.
Fool, fool. You knew there was something wrong…
Who were these people?
He squinted across to his right and saw a heavyset man with long matted trails of hair hauling Wulf unceremoniously across the forest floor. Wulf’s body was limp and his head dangled at an odd angle. Essa’s heart bunched up like a bloody fist – Wulf can’t be dead. The man dragging him glanced across and grinned at Essa’s own unseen captor. A long scar ran down one side of his face, and there was something wrong with one of his ears. Essa squinted, fighting the pain in his shoulders and head, forcing himself not to cry out. The ear looked as if it had melted and unravelled down the man’s neck – the lobe snaked down in almost a straight line. To his left, a third man, short and wiry, led Grani and Balder.
They’d hooked a rich haul, all right, with all the gifts for King Eiludd’s daughter stuffed into the saddlebags: garnet brooches, a silver bowl from Constantinople to hang from the high rafters of her father’s hall, bales of fine white linen and a long sword.
Then he saw Fenrir, and relief coursed through him. She was prowling stiff-legged around the group, ears pricked up. She’d stopped barking but was growling now, a low, menacing sound that seemed to shake the ground.
Wulf’s captor, One-ear, turned again and spoke. “We should take care, kaveth. These ones look rich. I don’t want to bring anyone big and powerful down on top of us.” His accent was northern, and he had used a British word, kaveth, mixing tongues just as the northerners did. It’s in tha face. Essa felt a fresh jolt of fear. For a moment, he was back in the beech coppice with Lark, and a dying man who had tried to kill him.
Then Essa’s own captor spoke, “It’s more than dangerous, but they’ve fallen into our hands.” He had the same accent as Wulf; he was Mercian, but Essa could have sworn the man leading the horses was a pure-blood Briton: shorter than the others, fine-boned, wiry and dark.
Outlaws. They’d been taken by outlaws: men banished from the halls of their fathers, rings torn from their fingers. Men forced to dwell in the forests and mountains, in the high, wild places where no one else went. They were traitors, murderers, thieves, or sometimes they had just fought on the losing side of a battle, their lords dead, their gold rings worthless. They were kingless men, beyond reach of the law, and the warmth of the hall.
He almost wanted to laugh. He was going to be just like them, if Egric did not kill him first, for his treachery.
If they did not kill him.
Rage flashed through his body like the shock from a burn. He would not die like this, like a beast going out to slaughter. He let his mind go blank for a moment, took a deep breath and kicked out with his legs, twisting his body like a salmon. His hands were tightly bound; he could feel the rope biting into his wrists, but the shock of sudden movement tugged them from his captor’s grasp. He heard Fenrir baying again, one of the men yelling in fear, and he prayed she would not try to bring one of them down like a deer. Then they would certainly kill her.
A shout of fury echoed through the darkness as he rolled across the ground, staggering to his feet. His bound hands became a weapon; he forced them up into the face of the man who came running at him, smashing both fists into his nose. Essa could hardly see; he let out a bark of laughter as the man staggered backwards, his face splattered with thick, dark blood.
He wheeled around to face the two other men. “Do you want some, too?”
The northerner let Wulf drop to the floor, and Essa heard him groaning. At least he wasn’t dead.
“Grab him, you fools!” yelled the Mercian, wiping the blood from his mouth. He stalked over to Essa, reaching for his knife. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cut your throat, maw.”
The Briton and the one-eared northerner came closer, drawing short, claw-like fighting knives from their belts. They circled him; he was surrounded. Then Fenrir came tearing from the shadows and cut them off, leaping up, pawing their chests, howling with rage. Cursing and screaming, they fell back, flinging up their arms to shield their faces.
“Down, Fenrir, down!” Essa yelled. She dropped back, and stood there, rigid, teeth bared. Good girl, there’s my girl.
The rope around his wrists was looser now; he flexed his fingers and yanked his hands apart. Closing his fingers around the handle of the Silver Serpent, he drew her from the scabbard. The gleaming metal sang a hissing note as she sliced through the air. He laughed, breathless. “Who wants a taste?” His voice was harsh, unrecognizable. Had he spoken in his own language or not?
It was as if he was floating above his own body, watching a stranger leap at the Mercian, sword raised.
“He’s crazy!” the Mercian yelled, jumping back out of the way, his face still smeared with blood.
Essa swung his sword, the blade sang through the air. On the ground, Wulf groaned again and sat up unsteadily. His eyes went wide and he scrambled to his feet, tall and wolfish, moving with the contained passion of a hound about to spring.
“Essa, watch your back!” he yelled, trying to shake his bound hands free of the rope.
Essa whirled around and the northerner leapt out of the way, knife still raised in his fist. Dodging Fenrir, the Briton ran at Wulf, but Wulf sidestepped him, using his bound hands as a weapon just as Essa had done, and piled both fists into the man’s face. Then Fenrir spun around, leaping, and brought the northerner down.
“Get her off me, for God’s sake!”
Essa caught a glimpse of her standing on his chest, and he knew she was thirsting for blood, longing to rip out his throat. It had been a long time since she had brought down a deer, and her need to kill was strong. No, girl, he’ll put a knife in your ribs, my honey—
Where was the Mercian? Essa could not see him; one moment he had been backing away through the trees, the next he was gone. The Briton fell, clutching at his face and cursing Wulf, and Essa felt a hot line of pain down his side. The Mercian was behind him, laughing, tossing the knife from one hand to the other.
“There’s a little taste for you,” he said, and Essa glanced down at his tunic
. Where his cloak had fallen away, he saw a dark stain spreading across the pale linen and the line of pain intensified. It felt as if someone had drawn a line on his bare skin with a burning branch, but the two things did not seem connected.
“Essa!” yelled Wulf. “He’s going to get you again! Get out of the way!”
His mind went blank; suddenly everything seemed very clear, sharply defined. The Mercian had a small birthmark on his forehead, the shape of an acorn. He was smiling and Essa could see one of his teeth was chipped at the front. Bright points of light in the night sky peeped down at the earth between the tapestry of branches: Lady Frigya’s discarded jewels. A high, singing noise pierced the silence and something flashed before his eyes. His hand jerked down the sword-handle – the blade had connected with something – he nearly dropped it. A bloody, animal scream ripped across the night and the Mercian fell to the ground.
Essa stepped back, breathing heavily. He glanced over his shoulder: Fenrir was still standing over One-ear, who had twisted over on to his side and was watching in horror. Essa whistled through his teeth and she came running to him, and stood panting by his side. He reached for her and stood there for a few moments, running one of her long grey ears through his fingers, unable to look.
“Is he dead?” He expected One-ear and the Briton to rush at him now he had called off Fenrir, but they did not. Everyone stood very still. Wulf was staring at Essa as if he had never seen him before, a grim little smile teasing the corner of his mouth.
On the ground, the Mercian rolled to one side, letting out a deep groan. He left behind one of his hands on the forest floor, fingers clawing up at the night.
Essa had cut off his hand, just above the wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he said, uselessly.
The Briton and the northerner shoved past him, the Briton tearing a strip from his tunic, kneeling by his friend to try and stop the bleeding. The Mercian was moaning, a low, deep noise that made Essa’s guts freeze. Blood pumped from the wrist stub in thick, dark globs.