by Frewin Jones
“It’s true,” said Rhodri, his hand on Blodwedd’s shoulder. “She would.”
The owl-girl said nothing; but her eyes glowed like amber flames, and there was a glad smile on her face.
Aberfa frowned deeply but said nothing more.
“We will guard her well, do not fear,” said Linette. “And as a reward, all we ask is to be in your vanguard when other dangers appear.”
“There will be plenty of opportunity for that, I’m sure,” said Branwen. “Let’s get ready now. A quick breakfast is all we have time for, and then we must be on our way.”
Once everyone had divested themselves of their war-gear, quite a collection of shields and swords and knives and bows were heaped up in the middle of their camp. Skur’s ax lay on its own, as did a long knife that had been taken from his belt and his yellow and black shield.
“I wish you could take Skur’s ax to Chester and display it so that all would know of their champion’s death,” said Linette.
“They shall learn of it soon enough,” said Branwen. “The next time our two armies meet, we shall carry the ax with us, and our foes will be dismayed to see that their Viking warrior is slain. Maybe that will give us advantage in the field.”
Iwan smiled at her. “You think like a general,” he said.
“Perhaps,” Branwen replied softly.
She turned and laid her white shield apart from the others, resting it against a tree trunk. She straightened up, noticing that Iwan was now looking at the shield and frowning.
“What’s the matter?” she asked him. “You’ve hardly spoken since I returned. Are you envious that the gods have not favored you with such a gift?”
He gave a crooked smile. “I am conceited enough to enjoy special treatment, I’ll grant you that,” he said. “And usually I deserve it. But I’m not sure that being a favorite of the Shining Ones is something I’d covet.” He looked at her, and there was concern in his eyes. “Be careful, Branwen,” he murmured, his voice oddly serious. “Be wary of the cost of such gifts. Do not let them …” His words trailed off.
“Say what you’re thinking,” said Branwen.
He was silent for a while as though choosing his words very carefully.
“I find your company mildly agreeable, barbarian princess,” he said at length, the teasing tone back in his voice. “I would not wish for you to be changed overmuch by your contact with the Old Gods—for you to become more like them. I would not want to have to start worshipping you!” He laughed, turning and walking away from her. “At least no more than I do already!”
She stared after him, her throat suddenly tight, her heart skipping in her chest.
Why does he say such things? What does he mean by them?
But the riddle of Iwan ap Madoc would have to remain unsolved for now. Branwen had urgent matters to attend.
Fain came and perched on the rim of her white shield, cawing as if to let her know that he would guard her new gift with his life.
“Nobly done, my friend,” she said, lightly stroking the bird’s chest feathers. “Keep your vigil here—I will not be overlong, and I cannot take you into the town. Such a lordly creature as you would draw too much attention.” She turned and stared out over the plain. “And that is something we cannot risk—we few among so many enemies.”
In the full light of day, Branwen found the age-old town of Chester and the army camp that sprawled at its side even more astonishing and impressive than she had when it had been no more than an unsettling cluster of lights in the dark of night.
She and her five companions made their way down through the grass and scrub of the low hill. They were more vulnerable, of course, without horse or sword, but also far less likely to cause comment as they moved in among the Saxon people. And in the thick of so many enemies, stealth and anonymity were their only real hope.
The land before them was brindled with woodlands, in some places forming wide forests, in others just a dappling of green where birches and alders and willows gathered. Close to the town they saw many coppiced groves where slender trees grew in cultivated thickets, providing timber and sticks and withies for the townsfolk. There were open tracts as well, cleared of trees for the grazing of sheep and goats and cattle, and other cleared strips of tilled land where wheat and barley and rye flourished.
I never thought of Saxons as farming the land. Foolish of me. Soldiers, I imagined—and the wives and children of soldiers. Never farmers!
The banks of the wide river were thick with reeds; and along the water’s curving course, the land was a lush, sumptuous green that suggested wetlands and marshes.
Chester lay on the far side of a deep bow in the River Dee. Several ways led into its eastern gates, but from the west it could only be approached by a single wooden bridge from which a track of beaten earth wound northward along the course of the meandering river. Jutting out into the river at the side of the bridge were wharves and jetties for the loading and unloading of river freight.
A steady flow of movement animated the roadway, ox-drawn wagons and carts and many people on foot, all making their way from the northern villages and farms to buy and sell in the markets of the town.
No roads led to the west or south. It was two hundred years or more since the trade routes had closed between Mercia and Brython; and these days only soldiers took the westward ways, with murder and pillage on their minds.
The town was contained within a deep encircling ditch and ringed around by a wall of wooden staves, not unlike the palisade that had once protected Garth Milain. Except, as Branwen quickly noticed, here and there the wall was of stone, as though more ancient defenses had been incorporated into the timber fortifications.
Sprawled alongside the town was a huge and seemingly chaotic encampment of tents and huts crowding around a small knot of thatched wooden buildings that Branwen assumed must once have been a farmhouse and its outbuildings. Among the close-packed tents she saw enclosures for horses and open areas where men gathered like swarming ants. The great encampment of the dead general Herewulf Ironfist. An alarming sight that chilled her blood. This was the deadly crucible from which had poured forth the armies that had laid siege to Garth Milain and Gwylan Canu.
“I hoped never to see that sight again,” said Rhodri, staring at the Saxon army camp. “How fate plays its tricks on me!”
It had been from this very camp that Rhodri had been fleeing when Branwen had first met him high in the Clwydian Mountains—a footsore runaway servant searching for a home in the west.
“It plays tricks on all of us.” Branwen sighed. She looked fondly at him. “Have I told you what a fool you are to follow me?”
“Several times,” Rhodri said with a sad smile. “And yet here I am.”
“Yes. Here you are. Will you never learn?”
“A ship is coming,” said Blodwedd. She pointed into the far north, where the coil of the river blended with the land in a blue haze.
Branwen peered into the distance but could see nothing.
“It lies low in the water, with wide bows and a high prow and stern,” Blodwedd continued. “The sail is furled, and it is drawn downriver by oarsmen.”
Iwan shook his head. “I cannot see it,” he said, clearly impressed in spite of himself. “You have marvelous eyesight, Blodwedd.”
She gave him a quick, strange smile. “Yes,” she said, glancing from him to Branwen. “You would be surprised at the things I see.”
“Are there men of war aboard?” asked Dera. “Is this maybe a lone survivor of the rout of the Saxon fleet at the battle of Gwylan Canu?”
“Did any ship remain afloat when the Old God came?” asked Banon.
“I think perhaps one did,” said Dera.
“I cannot see who is aboard,” said Blodwedd.
“It is likely as not a trading vessel,” said Rhodri. “There is much coming and going of goods from Chester.”
Branwen turned to look at the town again. With a pang, she recalled the tales told by the
old men around the hearth in the Great Hall of Garth Milain. Tales of how the Roman conquerors had founded the town in the remote times when their power was like a raging fire. Deva, they called it, naming it after one of their goddesses. A great fortress it was in those days, filled with magnificent stone buildings so tall, it was said, that their towers scratched grooves in the face of the sun as it passed above them. Some said that the Romans were giants, others that they paid giants to build their homes for them. Either way, it had been a magnificent place, by all accounts, brought low in the end—as are all things—by the passage of time and the ceaseless gnawing of wind and rain.
When the Romans had departed, the people of Britain continued to live in the decaying town till the Saxon invasion drove them west. For many ages the town was buffeted by warfare, overrun by Saxons, retaken by the warriors of the Four Kingdoms—passing from one side to the other, while the farms grew rank with weeds and the houses burned and the women and children wept.
There had been a final great battle there ten years before Branwen’s birth. Her father and mother had been part of the desperate last stand of the people of Powys against the war-hammer of the Saxons. But despite all their efforts, the Saxons had prevailed; and the people of Brython had drawn back behind their borders, licking their wounds, arming themselves in the few brief years of peace—watching and waiting for the onslaught they knew must come.
As Branwen and her band drew closer to the town, they descended the hill and came to the marshes that lined the river’s banks. Now all that Branwen could see over Chester’s walls were the thatched roofs of the larger houses and halls and the occasional curious stone construction that she did not quite understand. The ruined hulks of some great Roman building, she assumed, although she had never seen stone buildings that lifted so high in the sky.
The works of giants, indeed!
The six travelers had now come to the last piece of cover before the bridge: a huddle of willows with their roots in soft ground and their branches dangling in the steady northward flow of the Dee.
Thirty more paces and they would be in among the men and women crossing the river to enter Chester.
Branwen distributed five of the white crystals to her companions.
“Remember,” she said. “They do not make you invisible. Keep quiet and do what you can to blend in. Although the stones will allow you to understand Saxon speech, it will not make your words clear to them, so keep mute if possible.”
Banon held her stone up between finger and thumb. “How does the enchantment work?” she asked, staring at it. “What must I do to make it work?”
“Nothing,” said Branwen. “Merion put her power into the stones; we must trust in their virtue to protect us.”
“Much faith to put in so small a thing,” said Iwan, holding his to the sun. “It is a pretty trinket, though, with a rainbow at its heart.”
“Gavan ap Huw and his followers were making for Chester,” said Rhodri. “What if we encounter them in the town?”
“Remember what I said: make no contact if it can be helped,” said Branwen. “Chester is a large town; with good fortune we shall not become enmeshed with them.”
“Aye, a big town, indeed,” said Dera. “How are we to quarter this town? As a group, or are we each to go our own way?”
“We shall divide into pairs,” Branwen said. “Iwan shall be with you, Dera; Rhodri with Banon; and Blodwedd with me. That way we shall be able to spread through the town and learn more than if we remain together.”
“That’s wise,” said Iwan. “So, we are to listen and watch for a one-eyed warrior. But what if we see and hear nothing? How long do we keep up this spying game? And how and when and where are we to gather again?”
“We should meet up here at day’s end,” said Branwen. “I do not think this is in vain, Iwan; Caradoc of the North Wind must be held in captivity by some great lord of the Saxon people. A Saxon nobleman with but a single eye should surely merit some mention. I have faith that we shall learn all that we need to know within the walls of this place.” She closed her fist around her crystal. “So, we’re done. Let us walk open eyed into the lair of the wolf. Good luck to us all! May the Shining Ones watch over us.”
15
WHAT STRUCK BRANWEN most forcibly as she and Blodwedd crossed the echoing wooden bridge and came into the town of Chester was the overwhelming noise, the riot of smells, and the general sense of stress and urgency as the compressed crowds bumped and pushed and heaved in under the tall timber gateway.
Branwen had encountered large numbers of people before when she had entered the wealthy citadel of Doeth Palas, and she had found that disturbing and disagreeable; but it had not prepared her for this!
But there was nothing to be done—Branwen had to brace herself for the ordeal whether it was endurable or not.
There was good-humored shouting as friends greeted each other, angry exclamations and cries as the close-pressed people barged together, loud oaths when the wheels of two oxcarts became entangled. There was the bleat of sheep and the quarreling of herded geese, the creak and rumble of wheels, the snort and stamp of oxen. And under it all the loud babble and drone of endless voices, filling Branwen’s mind so that she felt as if she had thrust her head into a beehive.
She kept her arm linked firmly with Blodwedd’s, knowing how this crush and cacophony must distress the owl-girl and determined that the melee would not separate them. As was the case when they had infiltrated Doeth Palas, Blodwedd’s face was shadowed by a deep hood. Even if the white crystals guarded them from close inspection, Branwen did not want to risk the owl-girl’s inhuman eyes being noticed. From all she had been told, Saxons were a deeply superstitious people—even more so than her own folk; they would not react well to finding a demon in their midst!
Branwen caught sight of Rhodri and Banon making their way among the thatched buildings that pressed up against the inner side of the log wall of the town. She assumed Iwan and Dera were also somewhere nearby, moving cautiously through the slowly spreading throng.
The main thrust of people was heading along a wide thoroughfare—presumably to the main market square.
“This is our way,” Branwen whispered to Blodwedd, pointing ahead. “People gossip in markets; we may hear things to our advantage.”
As she allowed the tide of men and women and animals to take them deeper into the town, it seemed very curious to Branwen that she could understand what was being said around them. She could somehow tell that the people were not speaking her own language; but although the words and accents were foreign, the meaning of their words came clear in her head.
The thing that most surprised Branwen as she moved among these enemies of her race was that they looked not at all unlike the ordinary folk that she had met every day of her life in Garth Milain. She searched the faces—expecting to see cruelty and stupidity etched there, but finding nothing of the kind.
Stalls and open workshops lined the route, busy with trade.
“Eels, haddock, minnows, and pouts!” called a fishmonger from behind a row of filled wicker baskets. “Skate and lamprey, fresh from the river!”
“Are they today’s catch?”
“They are, lady—clean and sweet. I cast my nets and my rods ere the sun was up!”
Women sat under an awning weaving and plaiting linen and picking out intricate embroidery on rich fabrics, their finished wares hanging at their backs. The whine and burr of a man working a pole lathe came to Branwen’s ears, the craftsman busy turning handles for farm tools, his shop filled with wooden cups and bowls. There was an open smithy with a roof of slate, the sparks swarming high from the fire as two lads worked the leather bellows and their master beat the white-hot iron.
Voices cried out from all sides.
“Onions and cabbages, parsnips and carrots! Buy them by the shilling! Buy them by the penny!”
“Dyes and colorings! Madder and woad and club moss weld.”
“Skins and pelts! Boar furs f
or a warm winter cloak! Cowhide for a pair of hard-wearing shoes!”
“A fathom of fine cloth to make a kirtle for a lady! Brocade by the thymel! Linen by the ell.”
“New-baked rye bread! Wheaten loaves for the long in purse!”
The menfolk wore tunics of leather or cloth, dyed brown, blue, green, or red and held at the waist by leather belts from which hung the long-bladed Saxon knives known as seaxes. Only their beards set them apart from the men of her homeland. Branwen had been brought up with men whose chins were clean shaven and who wore the thick shaggy mustache that was traditional in Brython.
The women, too, were curiously similar—clad in floor-length linen kirtles and dresses, often with their heads covered by wimples. Their colorful clothes were adorned with jeweled pins and brooches, and many had pendants and chains wound about their necks and wrists.
If anything, it struck Branwen that these people were more prosperous than the folk of her homeland, and their love of color and jewelry at least rivaled that of the women of Powys. The wives and mothers of soldiers? They were that, it was true; but they were so much more than that. And again Branwen was puzzled that she had never thought of Saxon people living normal lives—and that their womenfolk would like to wear bright and precious stones at their throats and wrists.
This was turning into a day of unexpected revelations!
A man loomed up, dragging behind him a wicker cart on which lay a large barrel. He seemed surprised as he bumped into Branwen—as though he had not noticed her in his path.
The crystals were working their magic.
“A horn of beer, my merry maid!” the man shouted in her face. “We shall soon drink our beer from the skulls of the waelisc barbarians, so our lords and masters say; but for now a horn of beer will quench the thirst just as well!”
Branwen shook her head, gesturing to dismiss him as she gripped Blodwedd hard and moved away from the overbearing ale-monger.