Paths of Exile

by Carla Nayland

  Or it could be some other motive, nothing to do with the kingship, some personal revenge for a real or imagined slight. Eadric must have made a great many enemies in his time, not least from his tireless pursuit of other men’s wives. Or some traitor or agent of Aethelferth, removing the most effective enemy leader on the eve of battle? But any of them would surely have gained more from claiming the murder than from keeping it secret. It made no sense at all.

  Eadwine gave up, too tired and too despairing to think. He looked across at his father with cool compassion. Was this how Aelle felt, hedged about with impossible demands in a world that was grey and tired and bereft? And how bright and simple the vision of Woden’s hall, with all the trappings of a warrior’s life and none of the tiresome responsibilities. One step across a battlefield, one enemy blade faced without flinching, and a failure became a hero. So simple. So easy.

  A clatter of hooves under the arch announced Treowin’s arrival, wheeling to a stop before the King in a showy display of horsemanship. He held his spear aloft, getting the morning sunlight to glint off the blade.

  “The priests say –” he paused for dramatic effect, “the priests say – Woden has accepted the sacrifice! We shall have victory!”

  Amid the cheering, Ashhere fingered his hammer amulet uneasily. Despite his father’s status as a landholder, he found it hard to revere the terrible and deceitful war god. Woden was just as likely to accept sacrifices from both sides and cruelly break faith with one or both, like serving some arrogant and tyrannical lord. Ashhere preferred to rely on Thunor, who might be less powerful in the sphere of warfare but was certainly more trustworthy. Lilla and Drust seemed equally unimpressed. Lilla gave his allegiance to Frey Lord of the Vanir, god of peace, fertility, good harvests and farmers, the exact opposite of Woden’s violent chaos. Ashhere was unsure of Drust’s faith, if he had one, except that a goddess presumably featured somewhere prominent. It occurred to him that he had no idea which of the gods Eadwine put his faith in. He looked to see if Eadwine was cheered by the promise of the war god’s favour, but although his horse was still there and a servant was holding his spear, Eadwine himself had vanished.

  Lilla nudged him, pointing to where a group of richly-dressed women had emerged onto the steps of the palace. Aelle’s wife and her ladies, bringing the cup of good health. One of the women, a beauty with flowing golden hair and a face like a flower, had separated from the group, and Eadwine was hurrying through the crowd towards her.

  “Is that his girl?” Lilla asked. Eadwine rarely spoke of his betrothed, as if he considered the subject too sacred for discussion, but from the little he had said Lilla had envisaged someone resembling the goddess Frija descended to earth – at the very least.

  Ashhere followed his glance, and grinned. “Yes, that’s her. Aethelind daughter of Aldhere of Eoforwic. What do you think of her?”

  “Nice tits,” said Drust approvingly.

  “Er – very pretty,” Lilla said, with rather less certainty. It was none of his business, of course, but he had expected his mercurial captain to have chosen someone more – unusual. Still, perhaps it was some great marriage of state.

  “Oh, no,” Ashhere said, in response to his tentative question. “It’s a respectable enough family but they’re not real nobs, not like Treowin. Like Pa, the father was one of Aelle’s thanes who was in the right place at the right time and got given some Brittonic nob’s lands after Caer Greu. They’ve got a hall and a village at Eoforwic, just south of Eboracum, between the two rivers and near the burial mounds. Aethelind was helping with the family washing one sunny day, Eadwine happened to be passing, and he fell for her as if he’d been struck by lightning. The family couldn’t believe their luck – rumour has it the father told her to insist on at least another ten hides of land before she lost her cherry – and then Eadwine asked to marry her, and the father went to the temple of Frija and gave the goddess two whole cows by way of thanks. The King said he didn’t care who Eadwine married as long as he kept out of his sight – this was getting on for three years ago, and he still had four older sons then – so Aethelind’s father invited half the kingdom to a huge feast and got them trothplighted before anyone could change their minds. Good party, that was. Not often you can get drunk for a week.”

  Lilla could only conclude that there must be more to Aethelind than met the eye. Fragments of the conversation drifted across the courtyard, heard through gaps in the general noise. Aethelind’s voice was sweet, but a little reproachful.

  “– they told me you came back yesterday morning and you never came near me all day – yes, I know about the Council, but did you have to go to your slave girl – well, whatever she is, then – I wish you’d leave those grubby peasants to look after themselves and then we could get married – Darling, how can you ask such a thing? Of course I still love you. I can’t wait to get married. I finished all the embroidery months ago, and Papa says he’ll give us a hall if the King won’t. Darling, of course you’re going to win today. You must protect us from the wicked Bernicians – have you heard what they do to captured women? You mustn’t let me down. There, the Queen’s calling me. Kiss me. May the gods be with you. Protect me today. Don’t fail me.”

  She skipped away after the other ladies. Eadwine stood for a moment gazing after her, looking utterly wretched. Then, with rather more force than was necessary, he slammed on the helmet that would mark him for death and strode back to his horse.

  Ashhere watched Eadwine vault into the saddle with the ease of a born horseman, and retrieve his spear from the servant. Treowin offered a flask of mead and he waved it away, earning a burst of derisory laughter from Cynewulf.

  “Drink deep, die happy, little brother!” Cynewulf bellowed, appropriating the flask, taking a long swig and hurling it away over the crowd. He had obviously been following his own advice for some considerable time. Eadwine’s response, whatever it was, provoked another mocking laugh, and a sidelong kick from Cynewulf’s stallion. Eadwine’s horse shied and reared, and only superb horsemanship kept him in the saddle.

  “I’ll give you your orders, little brother,” Cynewulf roared, as Eadwine struggled to soothe his frightened horse and bring it back under control. “Here I command, and don’t forget it!” He held his spear high. “Hail to Woden, Lord of Battle! We march to victory!”

  “Victory!” the cry was taken up, and the crowd surged forward out of the courtyard.

  Ashhere, Lilla and Drust sighed, finished the beer, and followed.

  Aethelferth scowled at the walled city. It had never fallen by storm, so the legends said. Well, there had to be a first time for everything. He had not made himself overlord of Britannia from the Forth to Elmet by crying over spoilt plans. His captains were eagerly discussing scaling ladders and grappling ropes and speculating on the possibility of setting fire to the massive gates with a big pile of brushwood and newly-killed fat pigs. Lying north of the Great Wall, for most of its history Bernicia had been outside the Empire, and to the Brittonic component of its aristocracy Eboracum was the symbol of an alien occupying power. Burning it down, however impractical, was a prospect to be relished.

  Aethelferth was not particularly interested in avenging wrongs, real or imagined, that went back half a millennium or more. The Brittonic propensity to bear grudges until the end of time was not something he shared, although he regularly made use of it. He wanted Deira because it was rich, fertile and populous, and he wanted Eboracum because it was the capital of the North. He had destroyed the armies of mighty Rheged, the Pennine kingdoms and Dal Riada, forced Strat Clut to pay tribute, his first wife had been one of the Pictish line of Queen-Goddesses, and still people dismissed him as a jumped-up warlord enjoying a run of good luck. Eboracum would change all that. Eboracum would prove that Aethelferth of Bernicia – Aethelferth of Britannia – had come to stay. He was going to take Eboracum, or die in the attempt.

  The blare of war horns from the city roused their attention. Aethelferth snapped a few c
ommands, but his Anglian veterans were already forming smoothly into a shield-wall and his Brittonic cavalry taking position on the flanks. It was only a precaution, for he was expecting a parley rather than a fight. Even Aelle Ox-brains wouldn’t throw away the advantage of the greatest fortress in Britannia.

  The gate opened. A forest of banners appeared, over a seething mass of horsemen in no particular order. It was going to be an impressive parley, Aethelferth thought, counting the number of showy helmets and mail shirts on display. Beard of Woden, but Aelle himself was there! The royal standard-bearers had managed to get to the front, one carrying the standard wreathed with oak leaves, one flying the banner of the red bull. Aethelferth grinned. He had no great respect for his father-in-law, considering him a feeble old has-been. Black Dudda pointed out one of the other riders as the last son, the one whom Aethelferth had pledged to Woden if the god gave them victory.

  And then, behind the horsemen, appeared a river of men carrying spears and shields.

  “Their army’s coming out!” someone exclaimed.

  “Will you look at all that loot?” someone else said, as the front row of the shield-wall started eyeing up targets among the enemy leadership. This looked like a good day to get rich.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God!” said the Brittonic captain who had spoken the night before. “All our prayers are answered!”

  The enemy riders dismounted and the horses were led away. The enemy priests came forward to shout incantations and ritual insults. Behind them, the spearmen shuffled and squirmed into a deep but uneven-looking shield-wall. Gaps and lumps formed as men edged nearer to comrades they knew and away from strangers who followed a different lord. The whole line began to creep right as each man tried to get further behind his neighbour’s shield.

  The Bernician cavalry licked their lips, anticipating the collapse and the pursuit. No pleasure in the world could compare with riding down a broken enemy over level ground.

  Aethelferth stepped forward, spear in hand. Truly, Woden was fighting at their side today. Already the god had put madness into their enemies. Nothing else could explain their behaviour. His oath, and the promise of King and Atheling as sacrifice to the god’s power, had been accepted. Woden was keeping his side of the bargain, and now it was for Aethelferth to keep his. He flung the spear over the Deiran host and cried in a great voice,

  “Now I give you to Woden!”

  The Bernician shields locked together, as solid as Roman masonry. The spears came up, all at the same moment, like a monster displaying a row of steel teeth. These men had followed Aethelferth for twelve years, and they had never been beaten in battle.

  They charged.

  “Woden promised us victory,” mumbled Treowin, to no-one in particular. “We’ll beat them easy enough.”

  Aethelferth prodded disdainfully at Aelle’s corpse and spat on it for good measure. The dead king’s armour and weapons were stacked nearby, under guard to protect them from looters. They would be taken back to be displayed in the temple of Woden in the Bernician capital of Bebbanburgh. Who had looted the clothes Aethelferth neither knew nor cared. All across the battlefield his men were busy getting rich. The Brittonic cavalry were in their savage element, flushing out petrified fugitives from hiding and driving them into the river, or hunting them across the human wreckage before tiring of their sport and slashing them down with sword or spear. Their whoops mingled with the groans of the wounded and dying. A stray dog ran past with something red and dripping in its mouth. Two more snarled and snapped over a corpse. Gulls shrieked over the unexpected feast.

  In the middle of the field, as near to the original centre of the Deiran line as could be judged, two sets of three stakes had been raised. The central stake of one set held Aelle’s head, its grey beard dripping blood. The others each held an arm, impaled through the palm of the hand. Woden’s ravens would come to feed on these grisly relics and carry the news to their master. Half of Aethelferth’s pledge was fulfilled.

  But the second set of stakes was still empty. And the terrible war god was not one to accept half-measures.

  “Eadwine was here,” panted one of Aethelferth’s thanes, turning a body over with his foot. “He was trying to reach their King when Hrothgar felled him. And here’s Hrothgar, look, with somebody’s spear in his guts –”

  “May he feast for ever in Woden’s hall –” someone said

  “– so Eadwine must be around here – er – somewhere –”

  Aethelferth glared at them. “Find him! Find him quickly!”

  “Er – what does he look like?”

  Nobody knew. They were looking for a young man wearing an ornate helmet, a jewelled sword and an oversized mail shirt. But any of those items would probably have been looted already, and how were they to tell one stripped corpse from another?

  “Into the city!” Aethelferth snapped. “Find someone who knew Eadwine! Now!”

  Black Dudda, abandoning the looting, came to join the search and contributed the information that Eadwine was tall, thin and dark-haired. This reduced the number of candidates considerably, but it was not enough to be certain they had found him. And Woden’s wrath if he was fobbed off with the wrong man was too terrifying to imagine.

  Aethelferth was staring doubtfully at a lanky youth who looked to have been about sixteen, although it was difficult to tell because his head was split in half, when a shout from the direction of the city announced success.

  “Here, Lord King! Found one! They say she was his mistress once –”

  Two burly soldiers were dragging a woman between them, not so much because she was putting up any resistance as because she seemed too dazed to walk without assistance. She stared at Aethelferth with vague, unfocused eyes. Then she caught sight of Aelle’s three stakes, and the set of three more stakes waiting empty, and screamed and screamed.

  Rhonwen hardly felt the slap, or the rough hands shaking her, and she was only dimly aware of the harsh voice insisting, “Eadwine! Eadwine son of Aelle. Which is he? Show me, you bitch! You were his whore, you know him. Find him! Find him!”

  They were forcing her past the heaps of corpses, some already naked, some half-stripped, turning them over, forcing her to look into the dead faces. Tall men, short men, fat men, thin men, old men, young men, boys, blond- dark- or brown-haired, with limbs missing or heads shattered or bellies ripped open like a gutted fish. She stumbled over spilled intestines, slipped in blood, she was sick, she wept, dazed by so much horror, and they slapped her and forced her on. And all the while the constant refrain, “Which is Eadwine? Is this him? This one? Find him, you useless bitch, find him!”

  She peered through her tears and shook her head, and they grew angrier and angrier. But still he was not there.

  “You slut, if you’re lying to me –”

  Rhonwen found enough courage from somewhere to glare back at him, this hulking bear of a man who had destroyed all the world she had ever known.

  “He is not here!” she taunted him in Brittonic. “You fool, you miserable worm, you’ve failed! He’s not here, and he’s going to come back one day and kill you! Kill you!”

  She saw that he understood, saw the fury in his face, saw her approaching death, and she did not care. Because she also saw a flicker of fear cross the scarred face.

  “My Lord King!” A breathless rider, covered in mud and foam, reined in beside them. “Lord Owain sent me – fugitives – mounted – fled into the marshes – headed south – he pursues them, but ’tis hopeless country – he says, set guards on the fords of Aire – Eadwine is among them, but they must cross the river – you will take him there –”

  Aethelferth pushed Rhonwen from him, cursing. “Woden’s breath, who let him slip away? What do I feed you for? Guard every bridge, every ford, every harbour, every road out of this wretched country. I’ll give its weight in gold to the man who brings me his head! And you, slut –” he turned suddenly on Rhonwen, “I’ll want you again. Don’t think your lover has escaped. I h
ave pledged him to Woden, and nowhere in this world or the next will he be safe from me.”

  Chapter 5

  Aethelind stood trembling in the deserted family hall. All the servants had fled to hide somewhere. She supposed she should hide too. She could hear the shouting and whooping from the city, mixed with the shrieks of women. How could the army have collapsed like that? Like a sandcastle swept away by a single wave. Her father had been in the shield-wall, but she had not seen what had happened to him, or to Eadwine. The first reaction of the Queen and her women had been disbelief, the second horror, and the third panic. Aethelind had fled through the city, made a group of panicked servants help her unbar the south gate, and bolted for home. She had had no idea what she would do when she got here, except possibly put her head under the blankets and hide. She didn’t think that would help much.

  The shouting was getting closer. She looked round frantically. The hall was a simple building, not unlike a barn in construction and shape. There were a few trestle tables, a few benches, her father’s great carved chair and a side table holding the stacks of wooden bowls and platters, cups, jugs and the great gold friendship cup. Nowhere to hide. She scuttled through the door into the family chamber, which occupied one end of the hall and was walled off by a thin wooden partition. Her bed, neatly made and standing against one wall. Her father’s big bed, a muddle of disordered blankets and grubby sheets, with the coverlet trailing on the floor. She could hide under the bed – though she had better empty the chamber pot first – but that would be the first place anyone would look. The wooden chests holding the spare sheets and blankets and her clothes – her father’s clothes tended to live on the floor – were ranged along one wall. Could she hide in one of them? But they were not big enough, and anyway they would be the second place someone would look.