PATHS OF EXILE by Carla Nayland
When his homeland is defeated by a predatory neighbouring kingdom, Eadwine finds himself on the run for his life. Homeless, penniless and friendless, literally with a price on his head, he must evade his enemies, avenge his brother's murder and rescue his betrothed. Along the way, he will lose his heart to another woman and discover a shattering secret that challenges all the ideals he holds dear.
This is a new edition of Paths of Exile which was Editor's Choice, Historical Novels Review, August 2009.
"Paths of Exile is a wonderful story, one that conjures up this long-gone age in extraordinary detail and reveals a profound understanding of its politics, cultures, and religions based on extensive research ... the characters- some real, others pure fiction- are so solid and credible that they will stay with you long after you turn the last page..."
"A powerful novel. I was completely transported to the world of seventh century Britain. A strong new voice in the field of historical fiction."
Elizabeth Chadwick (The Wild Hunt, Lady of the English)
"Carla Nayland pulls the curtain back on the little known period of seventh century Britain to reveal the fascinating world of Eadwine. Filled with unforgettable characters and wonderful historical detail, Paths of Exile is historical fiction at its most intriguing."
Michelle Moran (The Heretic Queen, Madame Tussaud)
"An epic tale of battle, honour, loyalty and betrayal that is at once exquisitely entertaining and utterly convincing. A triumphant debut that demands a sequel."
Russell Whitfield (Gladiatrix, Roma Victrix)
Paths of Exile
Carla Nayland
Copyright © Carla Nayland 2007
The moral right of Carla Nayland to be identified as the author has been asserted by her under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
Published by Trifolium Books UK 2011
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the Kindle store and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is also available in print from good bookshops and online retailers.
Other Books by Carla Nayland
Forthcoming
Ring of Scorpions
Continues the story of Eadwine and his companions
begun in Paths of Exile
Ingeld’s Daughter
Can be downloaded free from http://www.carlanayland.org
To Nigel
who wanted to know what happened next
geond lagu lade longe sceolde hreran
mid hondum hrim cealde sæ
wadan wræclastas
wyrd bið ful aræd
(he must for a long time
travel the waterways, the ice-cold sea
tread the paths of exile.
Fate goes as it must)
From The Wanderer, tenth-century Old English poem
Find out more-
http://www.trifoliumbooks.co.uk
http://www.carlanayland.org
List of characters
Deira
*Aelle, King of Deira
*Eadwine, youngest son of Aelle
*Lilla, member of Eadwine’s warband
Ashhere, member of Eadwine’s warband
Weasel, member of Eadwine’s warband
Drust, Pictish chieftain, now a hostage serving in Eadwine’s warband
*Fordhere, Ashhere’s elder brother
Cynewulf, illegitimate favourite son of Aelle, half-brother to Eadwine and Eadric (all three by different mothers)
*Hereric, Eadwine’s young nephew
Heledd, sister of the previous King of Elmet, mother of Hereric and widow of Eadwine’s eldest half-brother Eadric
Rhonwen, Heledd’s lady-in-waiting and former lover of Eadwine
Ysgafnell, Brittonic priest and abbot of Christian monastery in Eboracum, previously a warrior in the warband of Peredur, the last Brittonic king of Eboracum
Beortred, captain of Eadric’s bodyguard
Treowin, nobleman of Deira, Eadwine’s close friend
Aethelind, betrothed to Eadwine
Deornoth, headman of the village of Beacon Bay
Fulla, farmer near Beacon Bay
Tunhild, farmer near Beacon Bay, married to Fulla
Bernicia
*Aethelferth, nicknamed The Twister, King of Bernicia
Black Dudda, Bernician warrior
Hereward, Bernician warrior
Elmet and the hills
*Ceretic, King of Elmet
Severa, doctor and hill-farmer, wife of the headman of the village of Derwent Bridge and manager of Derwent hafod (summer farm)
Blodwen, dairymaid and cheesemaker at Derwent hafod
Gwen, dairymaid and shepherd at Derwent hafod
Luned, dairymaid and swineherd at Derwent hafod
Gruffuyd, Blodwen’s son, shepherd at Derwent hafod
Lord of Navio, warrior brigand ruling from Navio fort
Imma, former warrior of Eadric’s warband
Mentioned but not appearing
Eadric, eldest son of Aelle, husband of Heledd, brother of Eadwine, father of Hereric, heir to Deira
*Osric, Eadwine’s cousin
**Aethelric, Eadwine’s cousin, brother of Osric
*Caedbaed, King of Lindsey
*Aethelbert, King of Kent and overlord of all the English kingdoms south of the Humber
*Acha, Queen of Bernicia, married to Aethelferth, daughter of Aelle, Eadwine’s sister
*Iago, King of Guenedot
Iddon, Severa’s husband, missing for four years
Constantine, nobleman of Elmet, Heledd’s cousin
Finn Lousebeard, trader in Eboracum
*Historical figure
**Possible historical figure (see notes in Appendix)
D
eira and surrounding kingdoms in 605AD
Detail Navio area
Chapter 1
Eadwine sprinted up the crumbling steps and ran round the ramparts to a point where he could see the southward road.
It was empty.
So sure had he been that he would see it filled by his brother’s approaching army that at first he thought his eyesight must have failed. With an impatient gesture he rubbed the stinging sweat out of his eyes with his torn and bloodstained sleeve and looked again.
The road was still empty.
His stomach knotted into the hollow pain of fear. He had no need to look over the northern rampart to see the smear of dust on the horizon that marked the position of the invading army he had been harrying for the last two days and nights of ambush, snare and murder. He had delayed them. He had left half of them dead. He had made the survivors curse the day they came to Deira. He had made their leader, one Black Dudda, into a bitter personal enemy who had sworn to see him dead. And it had all been for nothing, if Eadric was not here with the main army.
The old fort was half derelict and wholly indefensible. There was no garrison of any kind. The local population would be no help in any fighting, accustomed as they were to an easy and peaceful life here on the rich plain of Derwent Vale. The warden of the northern march was supposed to protect them from border raids, and no enemy had got this far in Eadwine’s three years of tenure.
Until now.
The smear of dust on the northern horizon was perceptibly closer. An hour away, Eadwine estimated, or a little more. A hundred warriors with fallen comrades to avenge, thirsting for blood. And nothing stood be
tween them and the heart of Deira, except Eadwine and the battered handful of weary survivors with him.
Snatches of talk floated up to him, as men shoved to slake their thirst at the fort well.
“– I told him his high and mighty brother wouldn’t bother coming, too busy chasing skirt in Eboracum, I said –”
“And you know he won’t hear a word against his brother, so you might as well save your breath –”
“Reckon he’s going to fight them here?”
“What, in this dump? Piss on these walls and they’d fall down.”
“There’s nowhere better, not til you get all the way to Eboracum. He’ll have to fight here.”
“A dozen of us, against a hundred of them?”
“We fight bravely and make an end worthy of a song!”
“A bloody short song –”
“You got a better idea? If he runs home they’ll call him a coward. Could you face that?”
“I’d rather be dead!”
“No problem there. Sup up, lads, we’ll all dine in Woden’s hall tonight.”
“First one there gets the beer in –”
“Last one gets the pick of the girls –”
Eadwine stopped listening. Icy sweat prickled down his spine. There was no more scope for hit-and-run fighting now they were out of the moors and marshes and onto the plain. If he did not fight here, he would have to flee ahead of the invaders and bear the shame of being called a coward. If he made a stand here, outnumbered many times over and with no useful defences, he and the men with him would die. A stark choice, shame or death. Yet he could not see it as simply as that. Already men had died at his command, men he had known and counted as friends, men who had families who would mourn their loss and perhaps curse him for it. If he was going to order men to die, he wanted to have something practical to show for it. What could a stand against overwhelming odds achieve? At best, they could hope to take a dozen of the enemy with them and delay the rest for an hour or two. If Eadric was on his way with the army, that hour or two would give Eadric time to get here and crush the invaders before they could plunder Deira. That would be worth the cost. Eadric would be proud of him.
He peered over the wall again. Still no sign of movement on the broad pale ribbon of the southward road. Eadric was not coming.
“Why?” Eadwine muttered. “Why, why, why? Eadric, where are you?”
To which, of course, there was no answer but a nameless, gnawing fear. Surely nothing but some terrible disaster could have prevented Eadric from answering his urgent summons? Eadric, the golden hero of Deira, would not have abandoned even the insignificant youngest brother to fight outnumbered ten to one, except in some dire need. What was that need? What was happening? What would Eadric want him to do?
“Lord?”
Eadwine whipped round, startled out of his thoughts. Lilla, the youngest warrior in the warband and the closest to a friend, had come noiselessly up the steps and was holding out a pitcher. Clear water dripped down the sides, and Eadwine was suddenly aware that his throat was parched dry as the dusty road. He drank in greedy gulps, spilling water over his face and chest, forgetting to breathe until he choked on it. How long since he had last drunk? This morning at least. Twelve hours of fighting on a hot day, wearing metal armour. With the partial slaking of his thirst came more unwelcome physical sensations, ignored until then. Hunger, aching fatigue, the crushing weight of his mail shirt, the small pains of minor wounds, a dull throb behind his eyes. And over it all the sick dread of anxiety. Why had Eadric not come? What to do for the best?
“Wulfgar says it’s just a raid,” Lilla said, sounding doubtful. “He says they’ll loot the hall here, burn a few unimportant villages and go home.”
Eadwine winced. That was typical of Wulfgar, who was good at fights and better at starting them. Talking of ‘burning unimportant villages’ in front of Lilla, who had joined the warband after his family and home were destroyed in a raid, was tactless even by Wulfgar’s clodhopping standards.
Lilla grinned, and pushed his mop of chestnut hair back from his face. “I didn’t fight him. I thought you wouldn’t thank me for it. Anyway, it’s boring. I always win.”
“Almost always,” Eadwine said dryly. Lilla was small and lithe and fast, like a stoat to Wulfgar’s bullock, but brawn had been known to triumph over speed. “And in answer to your next question, of course he’s wrong. A raiding party is a dozen or a score. Two hundred is an army.”
“They look in a hurry to get somewhere, too,” Lilla added. “Where?”
“It can only be Eboracum.” Eadwine gestured at the southward road. “That’s where that army-path goes. It’s the heart of Deira. If they take Eboracum they take the kingdom.”
“But –” Lilla began, and broke off uneasily.
“Go on.”
“Well – I’ve never seen Eboracum. But you say it’s a great city. A fortress. Bigger than my whole village and all the fields around. Even if they still had the two hundred they started with, that wouldn’t go far against Eboracum, would it?”
Eadwine sighed. He had been puzzling over that himself for two days without mentioning his doubts to anyone, but he should have known Lilla would be bright enough to work out the problem for himself. “They might as well try to fell a tree with a spoon,” he agreed.
“So what are they really after?”
“If I knew that,” Eadwine said wearily, dragging his hand through his filthy dark hair, “I’d know how best to stop them getting it.”
Movement below forestalled Lilla’s reply. A stocky fair-haired warrior was shepherding a fussy little man in through one of the cart-sized breaches in the fort wall.
“Ah!” Eadwine exclaimed. “Ashhere’s found the steward. About time!”
In theory he should stand on his dignity as the king’s son and wait for the steward to come to him, but he had never cared much for protocol. He raced down the steps two at a time, careless of the loose stonework. Lilla paused to retrieve the pitcher and followed at a rather more sensible pace.
“Message? What message?” said the steward blankly, when he was finally convinced that the smoke-blackened and bloodstained scarecrow in front of him was indeed the king’s youngest son. “No, Garulf never came here. Know him anywhere, I would. Was it important?”
“You’re about to be invaded by Black Dudda and a Bernician army,” Lilla informed him. “In about an hour, I’d say.”
The steward paled. Evidently Black Dudda’s reputation was known even this far south. “The Butcher of Eden Vale?” He flapped his hands as if trying to swat a wasp. “Why aren’t you fighting them? You’re supposed to guard the border! You’re supposed to protect us!”
Deornoth, headman of the village at Beacon Bay and leader of what was left of its militia, spat. “A bit of help wouldn’t go amiss,” he said, with a sour glance at the steward’s immaculate clothes and comfortable paunch. “Where are you when we get raided, eh?”
“Oh, well, if you can’t put up with raids you shouldn’t live on the border,” said the steward, with a shrug.
“Leave it, Deornoth,” Eadwine warned. “And you too, Fulla.” He swung round to confront a bearded barrel of a man in malodorous sheepskins who subsided with a sulky muttering, then turned back to the steward. “You’re certain Garulf never passed here? So Eadric would never have got my message?”
“Looks that way,” agreed the steward. “Any road, Lord Eadric’s got his hands full already. Rumour says he’s fighting Aethelferth of Bernicia way out west.” A complacent wave of the hand indicated somewhere comfortably far off. “Eboracum or Dere Street or somewhere.”
The news struck Eadwine like a blow to the stomach. Eadric under attack! His instinctive reaction was to race to his brother’s side with all possible speed and give his own life to save him. Then, hard on its heels, came rational thought. Black Dudda’s purpose became clear in a flash of insight, like sunshine breaking through fog. A surprise double attack, worthy of the clever and dece
itful Aethelferth. One army to march down Dere Street on the traditional invasion route from the north and draw Eadric into battle on the plain. A second, under Black Dudda, to appear on this back route out of the moors and stab Eadric in the back.
So Eadric needed Black Dudda’s army stopped. For a moment the prospect of making a stand here and dying gloriously in the attempt beckoned to Eadwine as sweetly as a girl in a summer hayfield. No-one could scorn him as a coward if he did that. It was the warrior’s way, the hero’s way. But the glory would be empty. A few deaths here, however noble, would not stop Black Dudda and would not help Eadric. A warning might save Eadric’s life. Put like that, it was no choice at all.
Eadwine looked round wildly. “Get me a horse!”
The steward spread his hands. “We don’t keep any horses here –”
“Then we march,” Eadwine said grimly. “Now. We’re an hour ahead of them. If we march all night we might yet warn Eadric in time. Tell your folk here to scatter and take their animals with them. Black Dudda is very angry and he’ll take it out on this estate, but he’s in a hurry. He won’t go far from the road.”
The steward gaped. “What? But you can’t –”
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