by Katy Moran
“Tha daddy begged her gan with him when he fled this place, though she wouldn’t. But when tha was born, Godsrule wanted to have thee drowned like a pup. A girl might have been useful, he said, to marry off to some other king. But he knew a boy were just a danger to him being king when Edwin died. And Edwin agreed, though he were the better Christian, and his wish was just that you’d both go to Francia and live in a monastery there.
“So she went in the end. Cai came back and stole thee both away one night, and you gan on a trader-boat down the coast with tha mammy and daddy. She went to the god-house, to be safe, and tha daddy took you, that Godsrule might never seek thee out. They say my Lady wept for thee a year and more.”
Essa stared at the ground. All these years, he had longed to hear this story, his story. Now he wished he did not know it. Roe put her hand on his and squeezed.
“And that’s how we’ll get thee away from here this time. You’ll gan to the sea, my dear.”
He looked up sharply, hardly believing his luck. “To the coast?”
“It’s quickest if tha wants to go south from here. Over a whole moon it takes to ride direct.”
Essa’s heart clenched – he was going to be racing Wulf now. Every moment would count. He had scant memories of sailing with his father and a crew of dark-skinned southern traders from the north-west coast of Rheged down to Wessex. He remembered Cai kneeling to tie a rope around his waist, lashing the other end to the mast, saying, “There, little cub, if you fall in, we’ll pull you out. We’ll run down the whale-road and be in Wessex in half the time it takes to ride.” The cowhide rope had dug uncomfortably into his belly and he had been seasick. One of the traders, a man with black hair wrapped in hundreds of tiny plaits that looked like snakes, had given him a piece of dried ginger to suck.
Sailing would shorten the journey by more than half. There was still a chance he could win this race.
He slept fitfully, sprawling among King Godsrule’s hounds, waiting for the darkest part of the night, for someone who remembered his mother to come and quietly draw the bolt. Drifting in and out of sleep, he thought of Wulf and Anwen. What would happen to them? Had they already left? He remembered meeting Wulf’s eyes in the hall earlier, each of them knowing their alliance had broken with Godsrule’s refusal to rein in Penda. But still they wore each other’s rings. Nothing would change that. Even when we’re both old men – if we live that long – we’ll have the rings, and we’ll always know we tried.
He tried to picture what would happen if the three of them were to just go away, but the blood-stained dream of the Mercian army bearing down on the village rose again in his mind and he knew he must return to Egric, to his lord. Egric would be back at Seobert’s side now, in Bedricsworth. What would Egric say when he saw him? Essa had been gone almost two months. Or perhaps Seobert had listened at last to Egric’s pleading, and there was already a host gathered at the western border of East Anglia, with Cole and Red and Ariulf, and all the men from village among their number.
But Elfgift was at Bedricsworth. He would go there first.
Essa was coiled in sleep when he felt Fenrir butting his arm with her nose. He rolled over, wincing as his weight rested on the long scab down his right side. The dog-hall was wrapped in darkness shot through with silvery lines of moonlight streaking across the ground, picking out the humped, sleeping bodies of the hounds. Then he froze: someone was outside the door. Fenrir nudged him again and he was on his feet in a moment. Come on, my honey, it is time.
They stepped silently across the straw-strewn floor, weaving around the sleeping hounds. A soft scraping sound came from outside – they had bolted the door to keep him in and someone was gently, gently lifting the bar. There was a dull thud as it was placed on the hard ground outside. Essa felt more than heard it, a soft trembling of the ground below. His hand rested on the back of Fenrir’s neck, more for his own comfort than as a warning. He reached the door and stepped back slightly, a sword’s length away from it. This might easily be a trap. Roe had seemed true, but maybe she was not. Perhaps this was his death waiting on the other side of the door. His death, come to meet him.
The bolt eased. Essa’s hand felt for the knife hidden in his boot, strapped to his calf, his fingers closing around the bone handle. He muttered a silent prayer, a garbled plea to the Aesir, and Jesus Christ too, for good luck.
A hooded man came in, cloak wrapped around his body against the chill night air. “Come,” he said softly. His voice was cracked with age. He closed the door behind him, and from beneath his cloak the old man drew the Silver Serpent. “Be quick,” he whispered.
Essa hooked the sword-belt over his shoulder and fastened the buckle at his waist, his heart singing with relief as he felt the familiar weight of his sword. He let his fingers rest on her hilt, and could almost feel her twitching at his touch like a hound, thirsting for blood. The Silver Serpent had come home: this was where she had been woken out of dead iron and steel, great ropes of metal beaten and twisted and hammered till the blade shone like the side of a fish. The Lady’s sword – his mother’s sword.
“Come,” the old man said again, touching Essa’s arm lightly. “Tha hast no time, lad.” For an instant, Essa did not want to follow him. He was so tired. He had ridden across the length and breadth of Britain. He wanted to rest.
“Where is my horse?”
“I’m taking you up the fellside; she’ll be there. Now come, for the love of God. If tha’s caught, it’ll go bad. Now walk along of me, if someone comes out of the hall for a piss and sees two people running, they’ll remember tha, and we won’t know if they’re loyal to tha mammy before it’s too late. So don’t tha run.”
Essa swallowed, and thought of dying with the air snatched from his body. Looking back to check Fenrir was behind him, he slipped out of the dog-hall, helped the old man replace the bar, and followed his unknown rescuer across the silent courtyard. For an old man, he moved quite fast, his gait uneven – some old leg-wound, Essa guessed. The man said nothing, but Essa knew why – when he glanced back at the dog-hall, with Godsrule’s huge hall towering behind it, he saw a light glowing through one of the high windows at the far end. He walked faster, his breath coming in short gasps as though he had been running.
Every shadow threatened to melt into an armed man, and the courtyard stretched before them. The old man seemed to be heading for one of the boundary walls, near the great cattle enclosure. Essa could smell the warm reek of cows, taste their sleepy breath rising on the air. At any moment, they would be caught, and this poor old man who had loved Essa’s mother would die with him. The wall seemed to get further away not closer, and Essa longed to break into a run and drag the old man with him.
At last, they reached the bottom slope of the great earthen wall. Essa looked up and saw the palisade fence stretching along the top.
“Must I climb?” he whispered.
The old man shook his head. “Follow me.” He led Essa and Fenrir along the foot of the wall – they were behind the stables now; the sweet scent of horses mingled with the cow-smell, and he thought of Grani. The way was overgrown with brambles; the old man pushed through them, but Essa’s forearms were quickly cross-hatched with scratches. Behind him, Fenrir whined softly: she hated brambles. Once, he had to turn around and ease one out of a tangle of long fur on her flank. The old man did not stop, and Essa had to push even faster through the undergrowth to catch up.
Then, finally, they came to a halt.
Essa had expected to find a gate with guards loyal to his mother ready to let him through, but there was nothing, just the great earthen wall rising up above them on one side, and beyond a huge thatch of brambles, the back of the stables. The old man had picked up a stick and was poking away at the brambles. “What do you mean me to do now?” Essa whispered, instantly regretting it. This man had risked his life to get him out. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful,” he said quietly. “But where do I go? I don’t understand where I—”
“Gan
, lad.” The old man pointed with his stick at a dark space behind the tangle of thorns. “Godsrule had us dig it through the wall after Penda burnt this place – so now we’ve a way of getting the children out if the heathen bastard comes up here again. I lost four of my sons in that fight, and they cut my woman’s throat.”
“I’m sorry.” Essa did not know what else to say.
“It comes out halfway up fellside – Godsgift’s waiting for you there with tha horse.”
“Godsgift? The Fox?”
In the darkness, Essa thought he could just see the old man smile. “Aye, he’s been waiting years for a chance to get the better of his brother. There’s no love lost between those two. Now gan, lad, and God speed tha way.”
He gave Essa a little push, and when he turned around, the old man had melted into the black night like a ghost. Essa looked down at Fenrir and rubbed his hand along her knobbly spine. Well, my honey. It’s just you and me once more. He pushed through the bracken and ducked into the tunnel.
From Ad Gefrin to the east coast
HE SLIPPED down into the cool, dark tunnel, breathing in a rich, earthy smell like old mushrooms going soft. Fenrir came afterwards, her claws scraping on the flint in the soil. Essa stood in the darkness for a moment, feeling the cold earth walls with his hands, listening. Had it all been a trick? What if this was not a tunnel, but a cave? A trap. Any moment, the old man would return with armed men and…
Fenrir whined, pushing forward, nudging at the back of his thigh. Go on, go on.
Then he felt it: the cool touch of breeze on his face. It wasn’t a cave. He started to run.
The tunnel seemed so long, he began to think Roe and the old man had tricked him after all; that they were in league with Godsrule. They had surely led him into a trap. But after his run in the dark had slowed to a walk, and the tunnel had turned so many corners he felt sure it had gone round in a circle and he was back behind the stables again, he saw a thin, silvery shaft of moonlight. He wished it was still dark. Pale sacs hung from the tunnel’s roof in white drifts. Essa looked up, unable to stop himself. The roof was alive with spiders bigger than his fist.
Shuddering, Essa scrambled up a rocky slope, Fenrir close behind as he whispered fervent prayers of thanks for the brightness of the moon, for showing him the way out. But it meant he had been away nearly two whole moons. It must be getting close to Eostre-month now – in the village they would be spreading dung on the fields and ploughing. They would be making spiced buns and rising at dawn to hang the ones they did not eat from the branches of the ash in the courtyard, tempting the great goddess Eostre out of her winter sleep.
They probably thought he was dead by now.
A dull ache lay heavy in his chest when he thought of Lark. He tried to recall the way her hands had felt when they had said goodbye outside the village gate: her long, lean fingers entwined with his, her palms hot and dry. His forehead and temples turned hot with longing. Did she think of him in this way? Or was she mourning him as she would a brother, like Cole?
The Fox was waiting, lying on the fellside whistling and drinking from a leather bottle. Grani and another horse were tied to a hawthorn tree hunched against the wind. Grani whickered when she saw him, and the Fox sat up. He was not alone. Anwen and Wulf were standing with him, by their horses. They turned to look at Essa, speechless.
“Took tha time,” the Fox said, swigging from the bottle. He stood, offering it to Essa. He ignored it. Anwen ran over and threw her arms around him.
“Essa! Oh, I’m so sorry! We tried so hard, didn’t we?”
He nodded, stepping back, letting her go. He turned to Wulf, wanting to clasp his hand.
“You must believe me,” Essa said, “I knew nothing about any of this. I’m glad you haven’t got back to your father with Anwen, but I swear I didn’t know Godsrule’s my uncle. And I really thought he might help the Wolf Folk somehow.”
Wulf smiled wryly. “I know. The way you ploughed your fist into his face gave that away.”
Essa tried to smile back.
“I can’t believe it,” Anwen said. “When I saw you standing there in the hall with all of them I just knew. You all look so alike.”
“It’s the wyrd.” Wulf shrugged. “The wyrd takes us where she will.”
The Fox took another swig from his leather bottle. “If tha doesn’t get moving, the wyrd’s gan take you all the way to a broken neck, my friend.”
Wulf looked down at Anwen. “We must go, dear heart.”
She nodded, hugging Essa again, so tight he thought she was going to squeeze the breath from his body; she kneeled and hugged Fenrir, crying as the dog licked her face. Then it was just Essa and Wulf, looking at each other.
“Keep my ring,” Wulf said.
Essa nodded, fighting a sudden wish to cry. Next time they saw each other, it would be on the battlefield. He wanted to say, Go well, but how could he? He did not want them to go well. He did not want them to go at all. He watched, dumb with misery, as Wulf and Anwen mounted up and rode off, picking their way down the fellside.
The race had begun.
He turned to the Fox. “Let’s go.”
“About time too,” said the Fox. “Hurry on, mount up. We’ll be riding the rest of the night, else tha’ll miss tide, and be waiting till evening. He’ll have men after thee by morning.”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
The Fox laughed. “Because tha did what I’ve been longing to do since I’ve worn the bastard’s ring, that’s why. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve longed to punch him in the face. And I don’t want thee around, getting in the way of me and Godsway. Now come on, if we miss tide it won’t be my fault. Can tha hound keep up? If not, you’ll have to leave her.”
Essa whispered yet another silent apology to Fenrir. Do it for me, my honey. Run as if you were running with the Great Hunt, all the way across the sky.
Essa swung himself up into the saddle. Looking back down the fellside at the great hall, at the firelit windows under the eaves, he wondered if he’d ever see Ad Gefrin again. After the welcome at his first visit, he hoped not.
It was a quiet, fast ride and the air around them seemed to crackle with urgency. The Fox was silent and Essa missed Wulf’s talk, but he knew he’d never cross the fells without a guide. My kinsman, he thought, staring at the Fox’s hair flying out behind him, drained of colour in the moonlight. For years, he had longed to hear of his mother’s people, but Cai would never speak of them, and there had been no use in asking anyone in the village. But Hild had known who he was. He felt a flash of anger: she kept me for herself, away from my real mother. But no one could keep him from finding Elfgift now.
Not long after they were out of sight of Ad Gefrin and high up into the fells, a great bank of cloud drifted across the moon. They rode at a heart-stopping pace across wild bosky moorland, at every moment in danger of a horse breaking a leg. Fenrir was only paces behind them, her powerful body streaming in long, bounding movements. The sky was turning grey in the east when the air started to smell different, and Essa caught a tang of salt that sent a thrill snaking through his body.
He did not want to race against Wulf, but if he must, he might as well win.
When they reached the brow of the next hill, a glittering expanse of sea stretched out before them, silvered by the moon. The hill swept down to a wide beach, pale in the moonlight, where shadowy figures moved busily about a pair of wooden skiffs, loading them with nets. At the foot of the hill glowed the dim lights of a village.
The Fox slowed his pace at last, sitting back in the saddle. “You’ll make it,” he said. “They’re going out on the dawn tide for cod, and the trading-boat’s due by any moment.”
“How do we know for sure it’s coming?” whispered Essa.
The Fox laughed. “Tha’s cautious, maw. There’s no one here to hear tha. The trader’s due today, but to pass, not stop by – that’s why tha must go out with the fisher-boats. And if they don’t
like it, this’ll talk them into it.” He held out his hand, showing a clutch of gold sceattas. “Give half to the fishermen and save the rest for the traders – if they think they’re full enough already, they’ll soon change their minds. Tha’ll need it, I don’t think they’re used to sailing with hounds.”
“You really are making sure I go, aren’t you?” Essa said, taking the sceattas, and marvelling at their weight. “It’s not even as if I want to be king. I’m lucky you’ve not finished me off out here.”
“Finish you off?” said the Fox. “Not after the sport you gave me earlier today. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself the more. Now gan, the tide’s coming on and the fishermen won’t wait. You’d best give horse to me, count it payment. Tha hast no use for her now.”
Essa dismounted and, handing the reins to the Fox, he walked around and buried his face in Grani’s mane, whispering words of thanks into her ear in British, in the old language, because horses always seemed to understand it best. He felt worse than when leaving Anwen and Wulf – this was another betrayal: another heavy price to pay.
He turned and ran down the hillside, Fenrir bounding ahead of him; he called out to the fishermen to wait. They had dragged the skiffs to the shoreline now and were stowing the nets, shipping oars, coiling ropes, all moving with brisk skill. His ache at leaving Grani faded when Essa saw that they had no reason to listen to him, a wild-looking stranger with a handful of gold coin. He should have asked the Fox to come with him. They would know him for Godsrule’s man, and listen. Since Essa was alone, they’d more likely hand him over to their lord in the hall in case he was a wanted man. Which I am, he thought, and fought the need to laugh. Penda wants me dead, now Godsrule too.
The fishermen all stopped what they were doing when he called out. Five hard, wiry-looking men stood watching his approach, hands on the dagger-hilts at their belts.