Treowin scowled blackly at Eadwine’s back as they rode on. He was reluctant to abandon his friend, partly from long affection, and partly because he had only the haziest idea of geography beyond Deira’s borders and had very little idea where they were. But he was getting very tired of this – to his way of thinking – unnecessarily tortuous journey to an unknown destination. He had no idea where Lundencaster was, except that it was a long way away, and if Eadwine continued to insist on avoiding the army-paths it was probably going to take them all winter to get there. Whereas Lindsey offered the prospect of food, fire, rest and women within a few hours’ ride. He disagreed with Eadwine’s assessment of Caedbaed’s likely attitude. Kings sheltered royal exiles all the time. When an atheling ended up on the wrong side of a dynastic dispute, he fled over the border to the neighbouring kingdom, where he lived in comfortable exile at his host’s court, treated as a member of the king’s household. When a suitable opportunity arose, the host king would raise his army and restore the exiled atheling to his kingdom, on the understanding that the restored king paid substantial tribute thereafter to show his gratitude to his benefactor. The rival would either have been killed or would have fled to a different kingdom, where he lived in exile until he could persuade his host to invade. And so it went on, back and forth without end, like the ebb and flow of the tides. The Brittonic kingdoms to the north and west of Deira did it all the time – indeed this was one reason why the aristocracy in both Bernicia and Deira was getting steadily more and more Anglian as time went on, as Brittonic kings and nobles obligingly fought one another and left widows, daughters and sisters who were only too glad to marry powerful protectors of any background.
Treowin could see no reason why Caedbaed of Lindsey should be an exception. His outlook on the world was entirely Anglian and centred on his father’s hereditary lands around Wicstun on the Deiran Wolds. He knew vaguely that Strat Clut, Pictland and Dal Riada were ‘up north’ beyond Bernicia, and that Rheged and the Pennines were ‘out west’ beyond Eboracum Vale, but he had no real idea of the vast expanse of Aethelferth’s tributary dominions. Whereas he knew Lindsey to be a fair-sized kingdom, nearly as big as Deira and if anything more populous, ruled by a fellow Anglo-Brittonic royal dynasty. Indeed, he considered Caedbaed’s family to be distant kin to his own, since they also claimed a tenuous descent from the great Offa of Angeln. Eadwine, he thought, was being unreasonably cautious – he hesitated to use the word ‘cowardly’ of a friend.
Treowin realised he had fallen behind and kicked his tired horse into a canter. The others were gathered in the shade of a cluster of thorn trees, but it soon became apparent that they were not waiting for him.
“– and I’ve bloody had enough of you,” Beortred was saying. “There’s no danger, I tell you.”
“It’s your funeral,” Eadwine said indifferently. “But you can see there are soldiers on the bridge.”
The hawthorn thicket was at the top of a pasture sloping gently down to a great slow river, much wider than the Ouse, meandering idly through vast scrubby cattle-dotted water meadows. The Trent, ancient boundary of the domains of Coel the Old, dividing North Britannia from South. In this part of its course the river formed the border of the kingdom of Lindsey, and ahead of the thicket it was crossed by an army-path and a substantial stone bridge. Above the bridge, on the west side, sat a small walled fort, its defences in remarkably good repair. At the west end of the bridge, spanning the army-path from ditch to ditch, a company of men was drawn up. The fort garrison, probably with other additions, at least twenty strong.
“Collecting tolls,” Beortred said curtly. “Anyone can see that. I’ve done duty myself, at Catraeth on Dere Street and at Calcacaster on the way to Loidis.”
“So have I,” chimed in several other voices.
“I don’t like it,” Eadwine insisted. “Why so many of them?”
“Because it’s an important road,” Treowin said impatiently.
“More likely they’re looking for us,” Eadwine said. “For me. Aethelferth could easily have sent messengers to Lindsey by now.”
“Could have!”
“When Aethelferth realised he’d lost us, he’d send men to watch the roads and guard the bridges. To capture us when we try to cross. It’s what anyone with any brains would do. Why do you think I’ve been avoiding the roads?”
“Beard of Woden!” Beortred bellowed. “Your brother would be ashamed of you! Skulking and hiding like some thieving slave! If Aethelferth wants your head, he’s bloody welcome to it! I am going to ride down there and across that bridge, and ask for service with the King of Lindsey. Who’s coming with me?”
“I am!” cried Treowin, hoping this would force Eadwine’s hand.
“And me!”
“And me!”
Everybody was, apparently, except Eadwine and therefore also Lilla, Ashhere and Drust. Ashhere looked longingly at the bridge, but loyalty held him back. Besides, he was reminded of numerous times on the March when Eadwine’s seemingly absurd notions had turned out to be right.
“Please yourselves,” Eadwine said. “I didn’t ask you to come with me. Go where you like. And,” he added unexpectedly, “good luck to you.”
Ashhere had expected they would ride on, but instead Eadwine stayed watching as Beortred’s party rode cheerfully down to the bridge. He was moving restlessly along the edge of the thicket and back again. The sun glittered off his helmet, and Ashhere was alarmed to see that some of the men on the bridge were pointing in their direction. It was not like Eadwine to give away a position in this slipshod manner. He thought about warning him to be more careful, but was afraid of getting his head bitten off.
Drust had no such concerns. “Can ye no keep still?” he said bluntly. “Yon fancy armour attracts attention.”
“Shut up,” Eadwine answered, but without anger. The bitter hostility they had come to dread had gone and his voice was thoughtful, much as on the March when he had a problem to solve. He unfastened what was left of his cloak, which was knotted together by two of its torn ends, and tossed it to Drust. “Here. Fix that on the end of your spear.”
“What for?”
“To keep the blade warm,” Eadwine said acidly. “To look like a banner, what do you think? Now go to the other end of this line of trees, and keep out of sight until I tell you. Lilla, Ashhere, over here.”
Beortred’s group was almost up to the line of soldiers. They dismounted gratefully, Treowin and Beortred leading, waving and calling cheerful greetings. The soldiers did not wave back.
“Not very friend –” Ashhere muttered, just at the moment when the soldiers levelled their spears and closed in like a pack of wolves on their quarry.
Eadwine was already kicking his horse into a gallop. “Drust, wave that banner and make enough noise for an army! You two, gallop after me and shout for all you’re worth!”
They burst out from the cover of the thicket and pounded across the pasture. Ashhere clung on to the reins, the saddle, handfuls of the horse’s mane and anything else he could get hold of, terrified at the appalling speed. He heard Drust’s mighty voice bellowing from the thicket and remembered he was supposed to shout too.
“Deira!” he roared. “Eadwine for Deira!”
He wondered if he ought to draw his sword, but decided he had better hang on to the horse with both hands in case he fell off. Ahead, Eadwine had no such difficulty. He had long mastered the Brittonic cavalry skill of controlling a horse with the pressure of his thighs, leaving both hands free for weapons. His right arm was useless because of his broken shoulder, but his left brandished his sword to great effect.
“Caer Ebrawg!” he cried, his voice high and clear. “Caer Ebrawg!”
The soldiers wavered. They had already seen the tell-tale flashes of armour spread widely along the thicket and betraying the presence of a large warband. Now they saw a banner appear and horsemen charging down upon them, led by a mighty warlord in glittering armour, whirling a terrifying sword and sh
outing a war cry. A Brittonic war cry, moreover. It was a century since Arthur’s heyday, but a healthy respect for Brittonic cavalry was hard-wired into the brain of every foot-soldier in South Britannia. The weight of a man’s head in gold wasn’t much use if you didn’t survive to cash in the prize.
They fled in the direction of their fort. Treowin and Beortred gave chase.
“Don’t fight, you bloody fools!” Eadwine screamed. “Run!”
Treowin heard and understood. He threw his sword at his opponent, caught one of the panicked horses, vaulted up and hauled one of the other men up in front of him. Beortred managed to follow suit, on the second or third clumsy attempt. Two of the others were luckily still mounted, and the last man managed to grab one of his colleagues and leap aboard as they hurtled away down the army-path.
By this time the soldiers had counted their attackers and were advancing again. Eadwine wheeled his horse and brandished the sword in a sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire length of the thicket.
“Drust! To me! To me, men, to me!”
The soldiers saw the banner and another horseman emerge from the thicket, and froze. It was only a few seconds before they realised they had been had – but by this time Eadwine had thirty yards’ start.
“Ride!” he yelled at the rest of the group. “Ride for your lives!”
A spear clattered onto the metalling and convinced even the most reluctant rider that a headlong gallop was the lesser of two evils. They obeyed. A second spear fell harmlessly a few yards behind.
“Back to the marshes, lord?” someone called.
“No!” Eadwine shouted back. “Stick to the army-path – outrun them –!”
“Bastards,” Treowin gasped. “Murdering bastards! Never gave us a chance to explain – just turned on us – and they’re supposed to be our allies – !”
“I told you, losers have no allies. We’re walking loot, Treowin, like a pig is walking bacon. Get used to it.”
They rounded a bend and saw they were coming to another river, much smaller than the mighty Trent. There was no bridge nor any sign of the remains of one, and the road continued clearly on the opposite bank, indicating the likely presence of a paved ford. And then they saw the soldiers. Seven or eight men with spears, lined up across the road and barring access to the crossing.
“Shit!” cried Treowin.
“Dismount and fight!” bellowed Beortred.
“No!” Eadwine shouted. “Keep riding!”
An hour ago most of them would have laughed at this extraordinary order, or ignored it. But after their experience at the bridge, if Eadwine had ordered them to walk through fire they would have tried to obey.
“Get close together!” Eadwine called, drawing his sword again. “Gallop straight for them! They’re facing the wrong way. They won’t stand!”
The soldiers were indeed facing the wrong way. They were drawn up at the lip of the bank on the east side of the river, just where anyone attempting to cross from the west could be cut down with ease as they clambered up from the ford. But this meant that against an attack from the east the soldiers would be trying to hold a precarious footing where a single step back would send them sprawling down the bank into the river.
One soldier glanced over his shoulder at the drum of approaching hooves, did a horrified double-take when he saw that they weren’t going to stop, grabbed his neighbour’s arm and shouted something to his companions.
The line did a reasonably adept about-face, and eight wicked spear points came into the attack position. They were not going to give up easily.
Lilla found his gaze irresistibly drawn to the spear tips, and his mouth went dry with fear. The prospect of floundering through a ford at a gallop was bad enough – what if he lost his balance and was thrown, what if the horse stumbled on something – but he also realised how very vulnerable he was to those steel blades. He had no body armour of any kind and no shield for protection, although in any case he needed both hands to cling on to the horse. Somebody else was riding at his right, but his left side was open, and a big powerful-looking man was hefting his spear threateningly just where Lilla would have to pass. He saw the blade poised, saw the big spearman draw his arm back for the killing blow – and then another horse swept up on his left, and Eadwine’s sword slashed down in a spray of blood. Lilla saw Eadwine jerk in the saddle, but there was no cry and he thought the jerk must have been part of the sword-stroke. The big spearman fell away and rolled down the bank into the river, blood pouring between his fingers as he clutched at his face.
Lilla’s horse slithered down the bank, stumbled, righted itself, and plunged through the ford after the others in a wall of spray that drenched them almost as thoroughly as if they had swum the river again. He felt the heave of muscles as the horse climbed up the opposite bank, and then they were pounding on along the army-path. He risked a glance around and saw that they all appeared to have made it safely across and they were all laughing fiercely or grinning like children at a fair.
“Beard of Woden!” Treowin panted. “Madness! Lunacy! We should all have been killed! But what a way to go!”
They slowed to a trot, the horses now getting very tired, especially those with double burdens. To their right, the sun gleamed on the wetlands they had crossed so painfully the previous day. To their left, scrub and heathland graded into denser woodland, with a ridge of forested hills rising beyond. The edge of the great dark forest that blanketed large parts of inland Britannia.
“What now, lord?” Beortred called breathlessly to Eadwine. “We can’t gallop much further.”
Eadwine was fiddling with something at his left side. He looked over his shoulder, scanned the country around, and looked over his shoulder again. There was no sign of pursuit. They seemed to be alone on the road.
He gestured at the woods.
“Off the road,” he gasped, his voice ragged. “Go to ground –”
Eadwine set his horse to jump the roadside ditch, and Lilla noticed that he reeled in the saddle, as if drunk or overcome with weariness. He shut his eyes as his own horse jumped, hung on to its mane for dear life, and hoped it would have the sense to follow its companions. The land was uncultivated scrub, a mixture of hazel, willow, hawthorn and gorse, rank grass, weeds, thistles and nettles. Reedy grass or, occasionally, brilliant moss revealed the existence of wet patches, and small sluggish streams appeared with little warning. Lilla let his horse do the steering and clung on as best he might, deeply grateful that at least they were not trying to do this at a gallop.
The woods began to close around them, mostly oak and ash with an understorey of hazel and brambles. They were going slowly now, following a thin track that twisted and turned under the trees. Some had dismounted, partly to ease stiff limbs and aching backsides and partly to avoid low branches. Eadwine was slumped low over his horse’s neck. No-one spoke. The light was filtered and dim green, reminiscent of swimming underwater in a silty river. Small birds flitted and chirped in the branches, never visible. A blackbird shrilled its alarm call. High in the canopy, a couple of wood pigeons rose into clapping flight. A squirrel skittered up a tree and chattered crossly at the intruders. By common consent, when they came to a small clearing they stopped. They could see nothing except the surrounding trees and each other. It was as if the world outside had ceased to exist. They were safe.
“How did you know?” Ashhere asked, leaving his horse and coming to look up at Eadwine. “Fighting from horseback, and them not standing at the ford, and everything?”
Eadwine was swaying slightly, his head drooping.
“It’s all in the poetry,” he said in a tired voice, “if you listen.”
“What now –?” Treowin began, and broke off, staring in horror at Eadwine’s left hand, which was trying to clamp the bunched skirt of his tunic against his waist.
Blood was trickling slowly between the fingers.
“Catch him!” Beortred yelled, as Eadwine folded up and sagged sideways into Ashhere’s arm
s.
Chapter 6
Aethelind screamed as the two looters dragged her out from behind the cart. They laughed, and two more broke off from looting the hall and came to join in the fun. Her terror seemed to amuse them, and they formed a ring around her, jeering and prodding at her with their spears. She wept and begged for mercy and shrieked for help, and they laughed some more and boasted to each other of the things they were going to do to her. Then they fell to quarrelling over who was going to be first, and Aethelind tried to run away.
This proved to be a bad idea. One of them tripped her with his spear and she fell heavily into the scattered straw. They gathered round, much uglier now and angry. One stooped and ripped off the brooches fastening her gown on each shoulder. The festoon of beads draped between the brooches broke, and beads flew in all directions. Harsh hands tugged at her girdle and pawed at her skirts. Aethelind screamed again and again. And again.
The panting weight was suddenly hauled off her, and the looters’ raucous cheering ceased abruptly, but Aethelind’s hopes of a miraculous rescue were swiftly dashed. A dozen more equally savage-looking spearmen came crowding into the barn, led by a fearsome warlord in filthy mail and battered helmet. They circled like a pack of stray dogs about to fight over a bone.
The warlord gestured towards the door with his bloodstained sword.
“Bugger off,” he growled at the looters. “This is ours.”
One of the looters, probably the one with the largest amount of portable booty, already had. The one who had been pawing Aethelind glared at the warlord in impotent rage.
“Who says so?”
“Hereward of Tweed Vale.”
Aethelind had never heard the name, but the looters obviously had. The man paled, but he wasn’t prepared to yield his prize easily.
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