Two men stood in front of Æva and the narrow strip of open land across which the Vikings made their stand. Just two strangers who had to die before she would be face to face with the bringer of her death. Her eyes raked across the thick line of Viking warriors, wondering who would be the one.
The drumbeat stopped.
On both sides silence fell.
Æva’s breath suddenly sounded incredibly loud. Her heart thudded, and her jaw trembled. She looked around her, hoping to catch a comforting eye, but every face, even Idin and Ælric’s, was fixed straight ahead. The silence stretched on, the tension unbearable. It was agony to wait here, each heartbeat counting down the seconds to the charge, but the alternative was even more terrifying.
The drum started again, this time a roll, rapid beats mirroring her racing heart. The postures around her changed. Spears were adjusted in grips, each soldier with a foot poised forward, like runners at the beginning of a race. The collective sighs of final deep, meditative breaths.
Then the drum stopped, and they were running.
Full tilt, arms pumping, legs thrusting against the ground. The roar was animal, rasping out through bared teeth, savage and feral. The bellow of the beast. Violence sparked in the air. Æva hurtled along, jostled and pushed. She moved her legs as fast as they would go, racing simply to stay ahead of the tide that swelled behind her. Her only thought was to stay near to Idin and Ælric, but in the frantic activity of the moment they were slipping away. She tried to go faster, fighting her body, horribly aware that she was speeding towards her doom.
The two armies collided with a shock wave that rippled backwards, halting Æva in her tracks. It was an explosion, force against force. Behind her soldiers crushed in, thrusting her forward into the carnage. She was hyper aware of her empty hands. Barely able to bend down, crushed between the struggling men in front and the clamouring troops behind, she had no room to manoeuvre. Somehow, she yanked the knife out, but the weapon seemed pathetically small. Around her spears were being thrust, the smashing sound of wooden shields assaulting her ears. And noise, everywhere noise. The infuriated bellow of rage of the fighters, the agonised screams of the falling, the adrenaline infused yells of those waiting their chance to hack and slice at the enemy. Her eyes darted around, but the scene was a blur of movement. Swinging arms, thrusting bodies, the lightning quick propulsion of spears, twirling shields. It was chaos.
Suddenly before her snarled a fiendish face. The eyes trapped her in its glare, black coals as dark as hell, wild with rage. Its mouth opened in a wide grin, blackened tongue and rotten teeth roaring at her, its cheeks were smeared with blood. It looked demented, terrifying.
The man’s broad shoulders were twice her width, one hand gripping a spear capable of slicing a hole in her belly. In such close quarters, though, it was almost cumbersome. He thrust at her, but his movements were hampered by the men packed on either side, and the spear went wide, cutting through the air close to her left ear. Enraged he pushed forward, breaking the rank of his line. He drove into her, the iron boss of his shield smashing against her ribs, decimating the fragile defence of her outstretched arms. She cried out in pain, her body crushed by his forward momentum, but as she stared into the horror of his eyes, waiting for the blow that would kill her, a long knife cut across. It stabbed through his temple, driving into his brain.
His expression went slack, the light dimmed from his eyes. Blood spurted from the wound, coating Æva’s shocked face.
For a heartbeat he stood, suspended, held up by legs that did not yet know they were dead, then he slumped forward. His dead weight crushed her, the limbs limp, hugging her in a grotesque embrace. She fell, sliding down to the floor where bodies lay like a carpet. It was like sinking into a sea, drowning under a tumult of stampeding legs. The air wheezed from her lungs, his crushing body suffocating her. No. This was not the way she wanted to die, trampled to death, slowly asphyxiating amongst a hoard of corpses. She opened her mouth to scream, but air refused to fill her lungs.
Something grasped the back of her tunic and pulled, hauling her skyward. The tangle of the dead resisted, sucking around her limbs, unwilling to release its prize, but the pressure was unyielding. Æva felt herself being lifted. Her legs twisted and kicked until they found purchase, somehow finding the strength to stand.
“Are you all right?” For a second Idin stared at her, his hand still wrapped around her tunic, the other clenched around a long knife dripping red with blood. Æva stared at him, shock numbing her senses.
“Are you all right?” he bellowed, and she tried to answer, but then time stopped.
It hung, suspended, freezing the moment. His eyes bored into her, concern etched on every feature. The bloody knife he held aloft glistened, one drop of blood pooling, ready to drop into the abyss below.
And just beneath that, a second knife. This one clean, razor sharp. And pointing at Idin’s chest.
Æva screamed, and though he could not see the knife, Idin knew. He saw it in her eyes the second before he felt the iron pierce his skin, find a home in the gap between his ribs. The hand slammed, thrusting the short blade into his flesh up to the hilt. His eyes widened in shock, his mouth forming an ‘o’ of pain. Then he dropped.
“No! No! Idin!” Æva screamed. She grasped his tunic, as if she could hold him up; as if somehow, if he could find his feet, he would be fine. “No! Help! Oh God, help!”
But there was no help. Around her the melee continued, oblivious to the fact that her world had ended. She hauled at him, but his legs wouldn’t support him. His body sank to the ground, to lie face down amongst the corpses, pulling her down with him. On her knees, Æva’s eyes darted around, hunting for a blaze of copper to rescue them, but she was surrounded by a tangle of alien limbs.
With a monumental effort she rolled his body over, knocking aside a Viking warrior who tottered unsteadily, blood pumping from a wound at his neck. Idin flopped onto his back, his face grey. His eyes were still open, though they gazed skyward, blank and unfocused.
“Idin,” Æva screamed again, shaking him. His head lolled from side to side with sickening ease. Distraught, Æva leaned over him, grasping his hair on either side of his face. She lifted his head, until his face was only inches from her own.
“Idin, can you hear me?” she tried to shout but her voice was already hoarse. His eyes rolled in their sockets, seeing nothing, but breath hissed from his lips. He was alive.
“Idin!” she sobbed. Her eyes drank in every feature of his face; the strong brow, the plane of his cheekbones, the shadow of his jaw. His lips were bloodless, pale and cracked. With each breath blood bubbled up in his mouth, sliding down his chin. Æva stared at it, horrified. She was being kicked and elbowed constantly, the backswing of a shield smashing across her temple and splitting the skin, but she barely noticed. Her hand drifted from his hair to his ribs, searching for the wound there. His leather tunic was soaked, the hot blood seeping through the fabric. Æva ran her fingers along the jagged edges where the chain mail shirt had been cleanly sliced through. With each ragged breath that Idin drew, more blood spewed through her cupped hand, running down to her wrist and dropping scarlet onto the ground where it disappeared, lost amongst the stains of so many others.
“Oh God,” she whispered. She lifted her hand, holding it in front of her face. The rays of sun that managed to find their way through the writhing mass above lit up the blood. It glittered shocking red, singing perversely of death and life together.
A hand clamped around her wrist. His hand.
She dragged her gaze back to his face, and saw him looking at her, his eyes dark. His lips trembled, as if he would speak but hadn’t the strength. Æva leaned forward desperately, but his eyes closed, the pupils sliding up into the socket.
“Don’t die. No, please don’t die,” she begged.
Squeezing her eyes shut in a vain attempt to hold back the tears, she kissed him full on the mouth, the warm stickiness of his blood smearing on her lips. Sh
e held her face against his, shoulders shaking with repressed sobs, drinking in the smell of him.
Then suddenly he was gone. Æva’s eyes flew open to see his face slipping away from her, sinking into the madness of thrashing bodies of the battle. She reached for him, trying to stop him moving. She couldn’t understand, didn’t register the arm around her midriff, the pressure of a shoulder digging into her back, the legs tangling with her own as they lifted her off the ground and began to fight against the crowding soldiers of the king’s army, impatient for their chance at battle.
For a moment she allowed herself to be dragged along, her entire being focused on nothing more than Idin’s face, scanning for some small sign of life, but then bodies began to crush in, hiding him from view. A shoulder crossed in front of his body, then two battling soldiers, locked in a deadly tussle, danced in front of her, completing cutting off his face. As soon as he disappeared, the trance holding Æva dissolved. She sprang back to life, scratching and kicking and wriggling, trying frantically to free herself.
“Idin! No, no, take me back! Idin,” she screamed, pounding at the arm hooked across her stomach. She kept her eyes fixed on the spot where he had lain, but as her assailant twisted and turned, trying to find a path through the ranks of jam-packed troops, she lost it. She scanned hysterically left and right, shrieking and crying, but everything looked the same. He was gone.
“No, no! Stop!”
She kicked out again, her feet slamming against her unknown captor’s legs, scratching with hooked fingers at the thick leather and chain mail covering his arms.
“Æva, stop it, girl!” She froze momentarily at the familiar voice. Then relief brought her back to life.
“Wulfram! It’s Idin, he’s hurt. You have to take me back; you have to help him. Wulfram, please!”
He ignored her pleas, resolutely ploughing through the hoards, ignoring the curious faces as he dragged her with him.
“Wulfram, what are you doing? You have to stop! Wulfram!” Her voice turned from confused, to outraged, to horrified as she realised that he knew. He knew what had happened, that Idin lay on the brink of death in the midst of the battlefield, Ælric caught in the same melee and fighting for his life. He knew and he was going to leave them there. To rescue her.
“No, no, you can’t! Please Wulfram, please don’t do this!” Her voice broke with emotion, wrenching sobs heaving in her chest. She strained her body forward, fighting against the steel band of his well-muscled arm, but it was hopeless. She stared at the space where Idin had been, her body sagging, surrendering whilst grief engulfed her. Once again, she was too weak, pathetic. Not strong enough. And it had cost Idin his life.
Her weight bore down heavily on Wulfram as she slumped, defeated, in his arms. She let him drag her, half hoisted like a child. Despite his burden, he broke into a job as he reached the rear of the army and space opened up, the younger, nervous soldiers loitering uncertainly at the back, waiting with dread in their eyes for the command to push forward.
Æva paid no interest to where he took her, barely noticing when he dropped her to the ground. She sat, legs folded beneath her, body hunched over, eyes gazing with despair at the battlefield. From here she could not see the fighting, could only hear the yells and clangs and thumps as soldier met with soldier, shied met with shield, spear met with flesh. Behind her came the soft snort of a horse’s neigh, the jangle of a bridle as a soldier passed the reins to Wulfram.
“You got her then?” She didn’t recognise the voice, didn’t care.
There was no response from Wulfram, and she had neither the will nor energy to turn and look at him, to see him nod his head curtly. She didn’t think what it had cost him to leave his men there.
“Æva, get up,” he commanded her, his voice drifting down from the height of the horse he had mounted noiselessly.
She ignored him, lost in her own despair.
He did not waste time asking again. His eyes drifted to the soldier who stood nervously ready, eager to serve such an important man.
“Get her up,” he told him.
Two hands hooked under Æva’s armpits and tugged at her. She didn’t fight, just hung limply like a doll. Struggling slightly, the soldier lifted her up to Wulfram, who snaked one arm around her waist and pulled her easily into the saddle in front of him. She made no attempt to help balance herself, her body lurching as the horse sidestepped nervously, alarmed by the extra weight. Wulfram frowned with silent frustration, but he did not rebuke her. Instead he held her tightly to him, both reins gathered commandingly in one hand.
“Get on.” Wulfram kicked the horse impatiently, urging the animal into a canter. Without a backwards glance, he sped her away from the battlefield, leaving the violence, the noise and the dead behind.
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“Why?”
It was the first time Æva had spoken since Wulfram removed her from the battlefield, and her voice came out as a strangled croak. Her throat was hoarse from screaming and tight with grief.
They had slowed to a walk now, the horse dropping its neck gratefully and plodding along. Wulfram had driven the animal hard until they crossed the river, at which point he must have decided the danger was sufficiently out of reach. At the slightest slackening of pressure from his legs the horse had shambled into an awkward trot, then a walk. The silence had been profound. For Æva the rolling noise of the battle had merged seamlessly with the pounding of the horse’s hooves, the blustered snort of its breath. It had numbed her, given her something tangible to fill the space in her head, to leave no room to think.
When it stopped, she was defenceless.
Shock, despair and anguish crept open her, silent assassins. Though the valley floor spread out before her, she saw nothing but a frozen image: Idin’s face, lifeless, bleeding, his eyes rolled back in agony, his body slumped amongst a carpet of corpses. They had left him for dead. She had left him for dead. And the future she had so hastily carved out lay in tatters around her.
She wanted to hurl accusations at Wulfram, to scream and rail at him, to make him bleed the way her insides did, for him to experience some of the excruciating pain that left her reeling in a stupor. But what did it matter? Nothing mattered.
He took a long time to answer her question.
“I was ordered to.”
She didn’t need to ask by whom. Idin had been right when he had told Ælric that Bayan would not spare many men to search for her. He sent only one – his best.
“How could you?” she whispered. “How could you leave him?”
“There are always casualties to war, Æva,” he told her.
She shut her eyes against his words, her forehead crumpling in pain, unaware that he mimicked the gesture in perfect unison.
“You are taking me back.”
A statement rather than a question but he answered anyway.
“Yes,” his voice was soft, almost apologetic.
“And then what?” she asked.
“Then I will stand guard over you until Lord Bayan returns,” he said, and she heard the threat in his words. There would be no opportunity to escape. He need not worry – where did she have to go?
She knew Bayan’s wrath would be explosive, especially when he learned where she had been, but fear had deserted her. How could he hurt her beyond the agony she endured right now?
Time seemed to drift by in large chunks. Æva existed in a dreamlike state which absorbed the passing minutes, hours. She experienced a dull surprise when the cluttered remains of the camp came into view. It was empty, only a handful of servants remaining to guard the wagons and supplies, to negotiate with the monks for fresh food. The tents stood erect, surrounded by a wide circle of flattened grass scorched with the remnants of a hundred fires. The ground was littered with personal belongings not considered important enough to be taken along on this, the last of days for many, perhaps even most.
Wulfram took her straight to Bayan’s tent. As soon as he stopped the horse at the entrance a servant
dashed forward to take the reins. Wulfram swung his leg back, dismounting in one fluid movement before pulling her down to the ground. Æva let him manhandle her body, making no attempt to orientate herself, but responding to the pressure of his hand as he shoved and pulled her into the tent. Once inside he guided her to the bed. She stood where he stopped her, staring blindly, and he had to place his hand on her shoulder, push her down so that she sank into the furs. Once on the ground, she curled up, cradling the pain in her chest.
Æva did not know how long she lay there. She was exhausted, her body craving rest, her mind desperate for the release of sleep, but she was afraid to close her eyes, afraid of the nightmares that would be dredged up to replay over and over again. She forced her eyes to remain open, the only thing she had the strength left to do.
After a while, Wulfram abandoned his post and moved to sit in the winged chair. He leaned his elbows on the handsomely carved arms, his palms pressed together as if in prayer. He, too, stared blankly.
When at first she heard the noise, it was already loud. Æva didn’t know if it was new, or if her mind had simply been too numb to register it before. She struggled to describe it. It was the sound of exhaustion, she finally decided. The tread of a thousand feet limping along, slightly out of kilter.
The army had returned.
She felt no surprise at this revelation. It was late, she realised, the tent lit by candles. She hadn’t noticed Wulfram move to light them. She was hungry, but it was a dull ache, paling into insignificance against other pains. Unable to summon the energy to rouse herself, she drifted once more, allowing the dark and the noise to fade back into the background. Without her knowledge, her eyes closed.
She was awoken by voices. Awareness came slowly, her mind reluctant to return to reality.
“I am sorry, Wulfram. I have disappointed you. I was wrong. We both were.”
Ælric.
Shocked, she wrenched her eyes open. The stature, the strength, was Ælric. Beyond that, he was unrecognisable. Head to toe, he was covered in blood, his leather tunic ripped, the chain mail shining through in the candlelight. His hair was slicked back, darkened almost to black with sweat, dirt and blood. his eyes gleamed, alert as always. Æva stirred in the rugs, rustling the bed of straw beneath, drowning out the quiet murmur of Wulfram’s response. She saw Ælric bow his head in shame, his shoulders hunched. At her slight movement he glanced at her. Their eyes locked for a moment, but his face was unreadable, a blank mask - no jovialness, no roguish wink, only solemnity.
Aeva The Wild Page 20