Paths of Exile

by Carla Nayland

  The village elders selected a heifer and a pig as the village’s contribution to Samhain Eve, men shouldered barrels and women hefted baskets and babies, and as the sun slid down to perch on the western hills a noisy cavalcade set out for Shivering Mountain. The army-path was not as broad or as thoroughly engineered as the major roads Eadwine knew around Eboracum, being not much more than a rutted track barely wide enough to take a cart. In places a sizeable tree had taken root in the middle of the road, or a particularly deep water-filled pothole had formed, and here a new track skirted to one or other side around the obstruction so that the road had lost its straight character and was beginning to weave and wind like an ordinary path. In a few more decades it would disappear as if it had never been. It followed the north bank of a little river, with the rock-crowned summit of the Withy Hill rearing up to the right and a flat-topped steep-sided moor to the south. After a mile or so the valley began to swing north, curving around the flanks of the Withy Hill, and a second valley appeared to the south. The villagers, who until then had been merrily singing something about a fairy cow, a witch and a thief, abruptly fell silent in the middle of a verse and began to hurry, as a man does when he sees rainclouds ahead and hopes to reach shelter before the downpour.

  It was not long before Eadwine understood the reason. The track passed through a copse of scrubby hawthorn rustling with roosting sparrows, and emerged into an open area. Ahead, a much larger army-path struck off to the right, north-westwards. Even though scrub had reclaimed the verges and weeds had colonised the ditches, this was a real highway, a military road engineered with uncompromising straightness through the landscape. Broad enough for two carts to pass with ease, surfaced with pounded gravel and flanked by deep drainage ditches, it was visible far into the distance as a broad pale scar making a purposeful rising traverse up the flank of the Withy Hill. Just beyond the junction, on the far side of a bridge over the river, sat the fort, as hard and square and dominating as the road. It was far smaller than Eboracum and not in such good repair, as if it had been abandoned or neglected for a long time in its past and only desultorily repaired. Its stone walls were missing a few blocks, and the headquarters building inside had lost one end of its roof in an avalanche of red tiles, but somehow the air of dilapidation made it more, not less, threatening, like a scarred thug with some teeth missing. Eadwine saw Severa cross herself, and many of the others reached to touch amulets or sprigs of rowan as they hurried past, casting fearful glances at the fort as if they were passing a dragon’s lair. Eadwine felt his lip curl. A lord should inspire this sort of terror in his enemies, not in his own people.

  Some distance ahead, a blackbird whirred from its roost and swooped low across the road, shrilling its alarm call. Eadwine tensed, all his nerves on edge. Most likely the bird had been disturbed by a rat, or even by another bird after the same roost, but his hand automatically felt for the sword-hilt that wasn’t there. Damn the Samhain custom!

  He felt it at first rather than heard it, and before his conscious mind could put a name to the sound a vivid memory of defeat and disaster came swirling back, a memory of blood and a broken shield-wall and pursuing cavalry. Horses, many horses, approaching at a fast trot.

  “Off the road!” Severa shrieked. “It’s his lordship! Off the road, quick!”

  Eadwine was astonished at the order, and still more by the reaction. Like any young man who could afford a good horse, he had often come hurtling round a bend intent on an impromptu race only to find the way blocked by a herd of ambling cows or a farmer with an overloaded hay wagon. Such encounters generally resulted in mutual cursing and either a screeching halt or a nimble piece of avoiding action, with or without an accident. It had never occurred to him to expect the cows or the farmer to clear the road – just as well, because it never occurred to the farmer either. But here everyone immediately began scrabbling to get off the highway and drive the animals with them. Easier said than done for many people, for the whole village turned out for Samhain Eve regardless of age or state of health. Eadwine scrambled down into the ditch to help an old man bent double by the joint-evil, and saw Drust doing the same for the pregnant women and Lilla and Ashhere chasing down errant toddlers further along the road.

  He could see the approaching riders clearly now. Four or five men in bright cloaks, all with spears and swords, and several spare horses carrying what looked like a stag and a couple of hinds. The Lord of Navio and some of his warband, returning from a successful hunt.

  Most of the villagers were off the road now, except for Luned trying to chase the pig over the ditch and a knot of men gathered around the heifer, who had balked with her forefeet in the ditch and her hind feet on the road and would go neither back nor forward. The pig dodged round Luned and she ran after it, hoping to drive it across the other ditch. That was a mistake. She passed much too close to the struggling heifer, which suddenly found a target for its frustration and indignity. A hind foot flailed out, and Luned went flying into the middle of the road like a child’s rag doll, straight into the path of the oncoming horsemen.

  They would have had time – just – to slow or swerve to avoid her. But instead, the leading horseman whooped with the savage joy of a hunter sighting prey, and with horrified disbelief Eadwine saw him deliberately kick his horse into a gallop and alter course to charge directly at the stricken girl.

  Luned was struggling to her knees, clutching her stomach and coughing. Voices yelled at her from all sides, proffering much advice but no actual help. Nobody with any sense was going to run into the path of a galloping horse, especially not one ridden by the Lord of Navio. Eadwine was just about level with Luned, could see that she was too dazed or too petrified with fear to run. He sprang from cover. One long stride took him across the ditch, two more took him to Luned, and his momentum was enough to carry them both tumbling across the road almost under the hooves of the leading horse.

  Eadwine heard the horse snort, felt a heavy hoof strike his thigh a glancing blow, heard another hoof thud down inches from his head, and then he came to a crunching halt amid a tangle of bracken and brambles. A split second later, Luned came to an equally crunching halt on top of him. He struggled to sit up.

  The horse, guided by its instinct, had tried to dodge round them, as Eadwine had guessed it would. But the rider had hauled its head round too sharply, throwing the horse off its stride, and then it had tripped over Eadwine’s leg. Now it snorted and stumbled, trying to recover its balance and failing. Its rider lurched forward. The horse staggered under the shifting weight, lurched another step, and went heels over head into a heap of flailing limbs. With a yell of outrage the rider pitched over its head, skimmed across the metalling like a well-bowled ball, and vanished into the ditch in a trail of broken twigs and flying nettles.

  Some of the villagers cheered, most of the rest laughed, and as the remaining horsemen pulled up in a welter of sliding hooves some of them were sniggering too. Either their fallen colleague was not popular, or they thought he deserved what he got.

  The sniggering stopped abruptly as a bedraggled figure hauled itself swearing out of the nettles. He was a big man, several inches shorter than Eadwine but twice his bulk, and even in the fading light it could be seen that he was in a towering fury.

  “I’ll kill you for that!” he spluttered.

  Eadwine had managed to struggle out from underneath Luned, who was surprisingly heavy, and help her to her feet. She was sobbing and shaking, but apparently unhurt. No thanks to this oaf.

  “Serves you right,” he retorted. “If you can’t control your horse, don’t try to ride people down.”

  The man scowled. He had little piggy eyes, a florid face, a nose like a battering ram, and an unpleasantly slack mouth that now hardened into an avaricious line. “Who are you? You don’t belong on my land.”

  “A passing traveller,” Eadwine answered, with belated caution. Luned was rigid with terror, clinging to his arm and trying to bury her face in his shoulder, and some dist
ance away he could see Gwen cowering flat behind a bush – Gwen, who would flirt with anything in trousers and should surely have been expected to give five burly spearmen the eye. What was it about this mountain brigand that could inspire such fear? He seemed no more than an ordinary thug.

  The piggy eyes narrowed. “Passing traveller, eh? Who gave you leave to enter my lands?”

  “I did,” Severa interposed, coming up and putting her arm around Luned in a fashion that could only be described as motherly.

  “You!” The Lord of Navio recoiled as if from a snake, then recovered himself enough to sneer, “Found yourself a new man at long last, have you? Some tramp who’ll take a barren outlander with no dowry?”

  “I am Iddon’s faithful wife, as everyone in this valley knows,” Severa answered. “This man helped us with the drove and is staying to mark Samhain Eve with us.”

  She lifted her chin and met the lord’s gaze fearlessly. For a moment there seemed to be some unspoken contest of wills between them, and then the piggy eyes wavered and looked away. The fallen horse had by now thrashed and struggled to its feet, panting and shaken but otherwise unhurt, and its owner now retreated to it and mounted in some haste. He forced a laugh. “Well, well! Passing travellers are always welcome in my lands. Stay for Samhain by all means. Stay all winter if you like. Come to the fort tomorrow and feast with me.”

  He wheeled his horse, signalled to his men, and was gone.

  “Hush, Luned, hush,” Severa murmured softly, trying to comfort the sobbing girl. “He’s gone, lass. He won’t touch you again, you’re too old for him now.”

  “Too old?” repeated Ashhere, puzzled. “But she’s only fourteen –”

  He broke off as the shocked realisation dawned, and Severa shrugged in weary affirmation. “His lordship likes them young.”

  Lilla’s fist clenched, and if he had had a spear the Lord of Navio would probably have been a dead man that night. “I’ll kill him!”

  “No, you won’t!” Eadwine said sharply, although he would gladly have done the deed himself. “We have our own business to mind, and it’s past time we got on with it.”

  The holiday atmosphere was gone, and they hurried on in gloomy silence, now needing torches to light the way. Eadwine dropped back down the line until he found Severa walking alone at the rear.

  “He’s afraid of you,” he said quietly. “Why?”

  She gave him a sidelong glance. “Your Ashhere’s not the only one who thinks I’m a witch.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  “No more than he deserved,” she said vengefully. “It was the autumn before I was married. He’d left me alone until then, probably from fear of my grandfather. A lot of people thought my grandfather was a wizard. But when he died, his lordship thought it was about time he exercised his ‘rights’. I was nearly fifteen, so in his view he’d waited quite long enough. It was pig-slaughtering time, shortly after Samhain, and I happened to be making black pudding when he came into the house, said he had a present for me and started taking his clothes off. He was alone. People don’t resist him. But I was furious, and so lost after Grandfather’s death that I didn’t care if he did kill me. I raised my hand as if I was throwing something at him, upbraided him in what Latin I could remember, and swore that if he laid a finger on me I would curse him so that his finger – or whatever else – would rot and turn black and drop off, that I would fill his belly with writhing snakes of fire, that I would make his skin flake and crack and flay off in sheets – and rather a lot of similar things that I can’t remember. Then I threw the cauldron at him.” Her eyes glinted. “It was a criminal waste, but it was very satisfying. He fled out into the village, in front of everybody. Naked as a plucked chicken, slimed from head to foot in black pudding, and with great gobbets sliding down his chest and dribbling off his – his – well, you know. It wasn’t boiling so he wasn’t scalded, but I suppose it was hot on his skin. He looked down at himself and he must have thought he was being turned into a toad or brought out in a plague of boils on the spot, because he screamed and threw himself down in the dirt and started thrashing and writhing about, trying to scrape the stuff off. I laughed and laughed, and he shot me a look of pure horror and bolted, stark naked and covered in black pudding and mud and rubbish, right through the village and back to his fort as if the whole Host of Annwn was after him. He never tried to touch me again.”

  Eadwine burst out laughing. “Good for you!”

  “You think I did right?”

  “Of course you did right. Except maybe you let him off too lightly.”

  “Iddon didn’t agree with you,” she said, rather sadly. “He had second thoughts about marrying me when he heard, but I was well dowered, so he overcame his – misgivings.” She brushed her hair back from her face. “He was right, I am sure. No good can come of annoying his lordship. It is just as well you are leaving tomorrow. He will not forget being humiliated like that, nor forgive it.”

  “If the Lord of Navio is the worst enemy I have to face, I will be well content,” Eadwine said dryly.

  It was not long before they passed another village, already deserted for the festival, and left the army-path for a narrow drove track climbing the hillside behind the village. As the track reached the fringes of a wood straggling down the slope it passed a small hut, half-hidden in scrub. Here Severa halted.

  “I do not celebrate Samhain,” she explained, sounding a little apologetic. “My grandfather abhorred the festival, and I try to honour his memory. I keep vigil here.”

  Eadwine surveyed the hut, which seemed to be an ordinary thatch and timber cabin such as a shepherd might build for temporary shelter. “Why here?”

  Severa opened the door and held her torch to illuminate the interior. It was as unprepossessing as the exterior, empty except for a raised wooden platform about three feet in height and depth and about six feet long across the rear wall of the hut, like a sleeping bench. Above it a cross had been drawn on the wall in charcoal. There was a strong smell of mice and thousands of their little black droppings littered the floor and the bench.

  “It is a holy place,” she said. “Or at least, a holy man lived here once. He was very devout and very mad, but my grandfather revered him greatly and used to send me with food, which the holy man gave to the mice.” An ironic smile. “They at least are still here. The holy man died years ago, the winter after I was married, and the villagers think his ghost haunts this place. They say there was a terrible smell here for months that winter.” She shrugged. “I do not know anything about that, of course, but I think if my grandfather was going to come back to earth at Samhain, he would come here. I would dearly like to see him again.” She jammed the torch upright into a holder cut into the centre of the wooden platform, and the cross on the wall seemed to dance and waver in the smoky light. “You had better hurry, if you are going to the feast?”

  “No,” Eadwine said slowly. “No, if the dead are going to walk tonight there are some among them I wish to see.”

  “It is dangerous, they say –”

  “I am not afraid.”

  That was not completely accurate, he reflected, groping his way uphill by the deceiving light of the full moon. It would be fairer to say that he was prepared to run any risk for the chance to speak to his brother again. Severa’s description of the Host of Annwn reminded him of the Wild Hunt led by Woden on stormy nights, when the dead racketed through the air like drunken warriors on a spree and sensible people stayed indoors. Sometimes it seemed to him that all the gods were the same, merely called by different names in different places, just as Eboracum was called Eoforcaster by some people and Caer Ebrawg by others. The Wild Hunt could travel the sky from edge to edge in an hour, so who was to say that Eadric was any less likely to be here than in Eboracum? And since the dead rode through the air, the best place to be found by them would, logically, be high on the summit of a hill.

  The slope eased, rolling out into a heather-covered plateau, and ahead of him
reared the crenellated summit tor of the Withy Hill. He did not know the way, and the moonlight was deceptive, but the rock was reassuringly rough and solid under his hands. A few minutes of scrambling brought him to the summit, where the rising wind keened in the rocks and tugged at his cloak. A huge yellow moon sailed majestically overhead, escorted by a flotilla of stars. Across the valley he could see the curving line of the ridge leading to Shivering Mountain, and below the summit the dark hole gouged by repeated landslips gaped like an open maw. Great beacons ringed the hilltop, their flames leaping up into the sky to ward off the spirit host, and the rhythmic roll of drumbeats echoed from the rocks, part summons, part warning.

  Standing alone on the highest rock, leaning into the wind to keep his balance, Eadwine cupped his hands to his mouth and called aloud the names of his dead. There were too many, far too many, his mother, his father and brothers, the men slain on the March and in their desperate retreat and in the battle that should never have been fought. Perhaps also Treowin, perhaps even Aethelind. The wind whipped away the names into the east, and on Shivering Mountain the flames and the drums rose and fell like the breathing of some gigantic animal.

  After a while, he retreated from the tor and found a place among the rocks out of the wind, watching the moon and stars wheel their timeless dance through the night. Nothing came in answer to his summons, and yet his mood lifted. Eadric had never been one to come when called; that was a disappointment but no surprise. But Aethelind had not answered, Aethelind whose heart was one with his had not come. And that must surely mean that she had survived, that she was alive somewhere and perhaps waiting for him, as Severa was waiting for Iddon. He turned his face to the north-east, in the direction Eboracum must lie, and sent forth a silent message: I am coming, my love! I am coming to you!