Eadwine turned to Deornoth and Fulla and the other men of the militia. “You’d best go home now. Look after your folk and your families. You’ve done your duty and more besides.”
Deornoth hesitated, looking half relieved and half disappointed, then offered, “We’ll stay if you ask us to.”
“Just take note I’ve already done my seven days for this month,” rumbled Fulla. “I know my rights.”
“Believe me, I know you do,” Eadwine said dryly. His stern face softened. “I thank you for your offer, but your families need you more than I do now. Someone needs to keep order on the March until I return.”
“Aye,” Deornoth agreed, unhappily. “You’ll come back?”
“I am still the Warden of the March, until the king says otherwise or until I die. Don’t fear. Aethelferth and Black Dudda will break on Eboracum’s walls like a ship on your cliffs. Unless the Three Ladies choose otherwise, I will be back before winter.” He looked round for the five remaining warriors of his warband, who were already picking up weapons and filling water skins. “Got everything? Come on then –”
“Well!” declared the steward to the world in general. “I never thought I’d see the day when a king’s son ran away like a coward without a blow struck, leaving us defenceless in the path of an army –”
Eadwine turned on him like a stooping falcon. “Half an army. Thanks to us! Don’t tell me you didn’t see the beacons summoning men to fight. And what did you do? Nothing! You left the Marchmen to do the fighting while you dozed behind our shields. You in the south think because you never see a raider that means there aren’t any. Well, you’re about to find out what it’s like, and it’s your responsibility to get the people of this estate through it with the least possible harm. So get off your lazy arse and herd your sheep out of danger. Earn your keep.” He turned on his heel without waiting for a response and strode back to his weary companions. “Come on. One more march. You can rest in Eboracum.”
On and on, mile after mile, the pale ribbon of the army-path unrolled through field and copse and pasture. Following it in the faint starlight made few demands on weary minds and bodies. None of them spoke. No-one had the energy for the marching songs or ribald banter that would normally pass the time.
Half-stupefied with fatigue, Eadwine seemed to see the ghosts of all the other soldiers who had marched this road in the past and would march it in times yet to come, striding out to conquer new lands, or fleeing in shame from bloody defeat, or hastening to the aid of comrades in some beleaguered outpost. He thought with gratitude of the men who made the road, so long ago that no-one now remembered who they were, or even whether they were men or giants or gods. The builders were gone now, but their roads and their fortresses still remained, still guarding the rich plains of Deira, if only men had the wit and the courage to use them.
“Open up!” Eadwine hammered again on Eboracum’s north gate. “Open up!”
A pale worried face appeared on the ramparts above the gatehouse. “Who’s there? Stand back so I can see you.”
“I am Eadwine son of Aelle,” Eadwine shouted up, stepping back onto the causeway so that the morning light would shine on his face and armour. “Open up!”
The sentry was still wary. “Give the password.”
“I’ve been away for half a year, how would I know today’s password?” Eadwine snapped back, losing patience. “But I know you, Ceolred. You hold land from Aldhere of Eoforwic, your ginger sow got into your storeroom last Yule and drank all the beer you’d brewed for your sister’s wedding, your children are called Eadgyth and Ceolferth and your wife was expecting another this Midsummer just gone. Now get down here and open this gate!”
Running footsteps pattered in the gatehouse, the locking bar rattled in its socket, and the gate creaked open to reveal two suspicious spearmen.
“Can’t be too careful,” mumbled the older of the two, reluctantly standing aside. “Raiders and thieves all over the place, they’ve already burned the wharves and all the boats on the river, and folk say there’s an army coming –”
“Two armies,” Eadwine corrected grimly. “Or rather, one and a half. Where can I find my brother?”
“Lord Cynewulf’s with the King –”
“No, no, my brother. Lord Eadric. The heir to Deira. Where is he?”
The guards exchanged awkward glances. Eadwine’s voice grew sharp with anxiety. “What’s happened? Tell me!”
The older sentry put a hand on his arm with rough kindness. “Easy, lad.”
Eadwine went very still. What little colour was left in his face drained away and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Is he hurt?”
The sentry swallowed, shuffled, and finally spoke.
“Lord Eadric is dead.”
Chapter 2
Eadwine stumbled to his knees beside the remains of the pyre. So it was true. Eadric was dead, and it seemed the sun had fallen out of the sky.
He found he was clutching a handful of ashes, as if trying to reach out to his beloved brother. Sighing, he opened his hand and let the grey fragments drift away on the wind. He should have formed a shield-wall and offered battle at Derwentcaster fort after all. A world without Eadric in it was a world not worth living in.
A slight sound penetrated his misery. He looked up, and for a moment his heart leaped in wild joy. Some mistake! Eadric was here, alive and well –!
He reached out and the illusion faded. Not Eadric. Eadric’s son, Hereric. The boy had his father’s blond colouring and muscular build, and the deceiving eye of hope had done the rest. Hereric’s face was puffy from crying, his blue eyes bewildered. He recognised his young uncle and crept out from the willows fringing the river.
“My father’s dead,” he said, in a flat, dead tone that failed to stop his voice from quivering..
Eadwine’s heart went out to him. Here was someone in greater need than himself.
“Yes,” he answered, not trusting himself to say more.
“He died in battle.” Hereric sniffed, unable to stop himself, and paused until he thought he had his voice under control again. “He was very brave –”
The sentence terminated in something between a snort and a sob, and the boy turned round hastily to hide his face.
“We’ll avenge him, Hereric,” Eadwine said quietly. “All those who killed him will die.”
“But it won’t bring him back!” That was a howl of pure misery, as Hereric gave way to his grief. “He’s dead! Oh, he’s dead, he’s dead, and I’ll never see him again –!”
The tears came in a scalding flood, and Eadwine put his arms around the boy and held him until the storm passed and Hereric’s racking sobs died away into a series of sniffles and gulps and long shaking breaths. He said nothing, because he knew that if he spoke he would break down himself.
After a while, Hereric pulled away, averting his face and scrubbing at his eyes. Eadwine looked tactfully in the opposite direction until a tug at his sleeve indicated that Hereric considered himself presentable again.
“Don’t tell anyone I was crying,” he said, in a small and shaky voice, and then began to cry again, quietly and hopelessly. “I don’t want to leave him,” he wept, “it’s all cold and grey and lonely here –”
“But he isn’t here any more,” Eadwine said softly, striving for something that might ease the boy’s grief. “He isn’t lying in the cold ashes. His spirit has flown away on the smoke and gone straight to the gods. So you and I are here missing a father and a brother, and your mother is missing her husband, but Eadric isn’t missing us. Tonight is his great night. Tonight he enters Woden’s hall. Don’t think of him as he was when he was laid on the pyre, but as he is now. The limp that troubled him since his fall two winters ago has gone. The wounds that killed him have all vanished. His hair is thick and gold and gleaming, even where he was going bald on top. He is as strong and handsome and merry as when he was a young man and carried you around on his shoulders, but he has the wisdom and the experience of his yea
rs. He is dressed in his best clothes – green trousers, a blue tunic, a scarlet cloak. A slave girl is arraying him for war. She settles his mail shirt on his shoulders. Girds his sword at his waist. Standing on a stool – for he was a tall man – she sets his boar-crested helmet on his head. In his left hand he takes his shield. In his right he grips his spear.”
A quick glance sideways confirmed that he had Hereric’s rapt attention.
“Now see him entering Woden’s hall. It is a magnificent building, a hundred times bigger than the palace at Eboracum, built not from stone but from massive timbers hewn by the giants at Thunor’s command. Tapestries worked by Frija and her maidens adorn the walls, showing how Woden hung upon the World Tree to win the mead of poetry, how Thunor fought the serpent and defeated the giants. All are so richly ablaze with gold and colours that the pictures seem alive. A great fire burns in the centre, built from whole trees, and the light of it flows over the land for miles around. Over it hangs a huge cauldron, big enough to cook two whole oxen at once. Woden’s handmaids, each as fair as the fairest princess, carry mead and meat and bread to the warriors. A skald sings the Lay of Beowulf. All the great warriors are there, at feast after a day in the field. Look along the mead-benches at all the famous faces. There is Offa, who was king in Angeln over the sea. Osferth, who first brought the men of Deira across the sea to serve the Emperors in Britannia. Westerfalca, who kept faith with the kings of Eboracum when the Jutes rebelled and was recognised as the first king of Deira in consequence – your great-great-great-great grandfather, Hereric. And at his side sits Eadhelm, your uncle who fell at the battle of Caer Greu and who your father avenged on the field. Every man there is a king or an atheling.
“Now the door swings wide. The flames flicker and out of the swirling smoke strides your father. His mail coat glitters. The grey blade of the spear in his hand glints. The red eyes of the boar upon his helmet glow as if alive, defying anyone to harm the man under its protection. On his shield the fire-drakes writhe, blue and red and green. The hilt of his sword, gold and jewelled, flashes in the firelight so that it hurts the eye to look upon it. At his shoulder the brooch on his cloak sparkles. Beside him the slave girl, though a strapping lass, can barely stagger under the weight of gold and silver plate in her arms.
“The skald ceases in his song. All along the mead-benches the warriors stop their talk, fall silent and turn to gaze. Woden’s handmaids pause in their serving and stare, nudge one another and whisper. There are great names among the drinkers in that hall, men who were kings here on earth, yet none came there more richly provisioned, nor more noble in his bearing. All eyes follow him as he strides through the hall. Who is he, this tall and handsome man, bearing gifts of such splendour? Surely a king, king of the greatest kingdom on earth.
“He approaches the top table where the gods sit at meat, the three sons of Tiw Allfather who rule the world of the gods. Woden in the centre, an awesome figure more than man-high, his face shrouded, his one eye burning like a coal. Lord Frey on the left, the foster-son, his golden hair bright as the sun. Thunor on the right, his shoulders three times broader than a big man, his red beard flowing over his mighty chest. On the table before him lies his hammer, that forged the earth and has shattered many a giant’s skull, and in his hand he holds the whetstone that makes the lightning flash in the skies. You and I, Hereric, would fall in fear before them, but your father has passed the dread gates of death and they hold no terror for him. He stands before Woden as a thane before his king, respectful, admiring, but not servile, a free man among his equals. At his gesture, the slave girl spreads her burden on the table before the gods. They are pleased with the gifts, for though they have many rare and beautiful things, they have nothing finer.
“Woden rises, cloaked in shadow. He is tall, taller than the tallest man, and his head brushes the rafters of that lofty hall. His voice is like the roar of flame in a forest, like the thunder of waves upon a shore. Woden speaks.”
Eadwine pitched his own voice as deep as it would go. “Welcome to my hall, Eadric son of Aelle, Atheling of Deira. Long you have been in the coming. There is one here who has waited for you.”
He reverted to his normal tones with a certain amount of relief. “And from the mead-benches rises his brother Eadhelm who fell alongside the kings of Eboracum at Caer Greu more than twenty years ago. They embrace, for they were close here on earth and long kept one another’s backs against the foe, and it was to avenge Eadhelm that Eadric slew the Bernician prince. He takes his place on the mead-benches, between Eadhelm and Westerfalca. Mead is brought to him, and boiled meat, and fine white bread. And at a word from Woden the skald sings again, but this time it is a new lay, the Lay of Eadric of Deira, the scourge of Bernicia, the helmet of his people.
“And at the end of the evening, when men are beginning to think not of talk and song but of sleep, Lady Frija, Queen of the gods, enters the hall. More lovely is she than any human lady, adorned with gold and jewels of rare beauty. She bears a great golden cup filled with rich red wine, and after Woden and Thunor and Frey have drunk she carries the cup to your father, first among all Woden’s thanes. Her eyes are bright like the stars at evening, and her voice is like the sparkling of clear water.”
He considered trying to imitate a goddess’ falsetto and decided against it. If he succeeded he would never hear the last of it. “She welcomes your father to her lord’s hall, and says that she will never again fear the attacks of the giants. And so your father enters Woden’s service, not the least among his housecarls, and there he will fight for Woden and Thunor against the giants until you go to join him and are welcomed to Woden’s hall in your turn.”
Hereric sniffed again, but his face had relaxed and when he spoke his voice was more normal. “I wish somebody had told me all that before.”
“Surely you knew about Woden’s hall?”
“Sort of,” agreed Hereric, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “But nobody tells it like you do. I missed you when you went up north.” He peered up at the sky. “Is Dad really up there somewhere looking down on us?”
“Yes,” Eadwine said firmly. Consoling the boy had brought him some comfort too. “So we have to make him proud of us. You’ll grow into a fine young man in a few years, and people will look at you and see your father in you. You’re his immortality, Hereric, as much as any of the poetry his skalds will sing about him. As long as men remember him as the great hero he was, he will never really die.” He took Hereric’s arm. “Come along. The sun is well into the west and we ought to be getting back to the city before they bar the gates. This is no time to be outside the walls. Look at the smoke in the north! The Bernicians can’t be more than a few miles away.”
“Why aren’t you fighting them?”
Eadwine managed not to flinch at the question. “I have been.”
“Did you win?”
“Not exactly.”
Hereric looked doubtful, not being aware that the question could have any answer other than yes or no. He liked his young uncle, who was undeniably odd and whose interest in Brittonic poetry and devotion to his betrothed made him a frequent target of mockery, but who was kind and funny and always had time for him. Hereric did not want to think Eadwine was a coward and have to despise him. He swallowed. “You didn’t –” he hesitated over the shameful words “– you didn’t run away?”
“Not exactly.”
Hereric swallowed again. “Did you kill lots of Bernicians?”
“Yes.”
Hereric looked a little happier with that answer, though still puzzled.
“Why aren’t you pleased about it?”
Eadwine ran his free hand wearily through his hair. “Because it doesn’t seem important any more.”
“Why are they attacking us? King Aethelferth’s supposed to be our ally, isn’t he? Since Aunt Acha went to Bernicia to marry him. It’s not fair!”
“Because Aethelferth never keeps his promises,” Eadwine said bitterly. “His Brittonic nickname is
Aethelferth Flesaurs, which means Aethelferth the Twister in our language. You know his banner is a double-headed serpent? Think of it as a two-faced snake. It suits him.”
“Why –” Hereric began, and broke off, shrinking close to Eadwine’s side in sudden fear. The riverside path was barred by a huge warrior, towering half a head taller than Eadwine (who was himself a tall man), broad in proportion, and bristling with red hair and red beard. He could have been the god Thunor come to earth, except that instead of a whetstone and a hammer he carried a wicked-looking spear and a small round shield of unmistakable design.
Hereric planted himself shoulder-to-shoulder with his uncle and drew his small eating knife from his belt, determined to sell their lives dearly.
“It’s all right, Hereric,” Eadwine said, “this is Drust. He belongs to my warband.”
Hereric’s eyes were as round as the shield. “But he – he – he’s –” his voice dropped to a shocked whisper “– he’s a Pict!”
“Son of the Goddess,” chorused Eadwine and Drust in unison.
Drust grinned. “Ye’re learning.” He looked down on Hereric like a kindly giant. “Ye can put the knife away, laddie. Ye’re safe enough. We only eat boys at the full moon.”
Hereric gulped, and then realised he was being teased. His expression changed from one of terror to one of fascination.
“I keep my tail in my trews and my cloven hooves in my boots,” remarked Drust, after some minutes under Hereric’s unblinking stare.
Hereric blushed and stammered an apology.
“Och, dinna fret, laddie. Ye’re no the first to look at me like that here.”
“You ought not to be wandering around on your own down here,” Eadwine said. “Didn’t I tell you to go to the King’s hall for food and rest? Big square stone building in the middle of the city, go through the courtyard and the hall’s opposite the main gate, you can’t miss it.” He ran a hand through his hair in a distracted gesture. “I meant to –”
Paths of Exile Page 2