Paths of Exile

by Carla Nayland

Eventually, feeling strangely at peace, he slept.

  In the hall at Eoforwic, Hereward rolled sleepily out of bed and padded across the chamber to the window without bothering to put his clothes on. He pushed back the shutters. It was a fine day. A few birds were singing and it was getting light. Hereward yawned and stretched like a contented dog. He felt good this morning. A good dinner and a soft bed with a warm woman in it. What more could a man want from life?

  He turned back to the bed and stood looking down at Aethelind. She was so pretty, lying in her cloud of tumbled golden hair, and with the covers not quite drawn up to her neck –

  The girl opened her eyes and smiled at him without moving. Her gaze travelled slowly over him from head to toe, then slowly back up again before stopping about halfway.

  “My Lord,” she murmured, throatily.

  Lord was one of the god Frey’s titles. Frey was a fertility god, and all his images had one very prominent feature in common. Hereward looked down, and blushed rather proudly. He climbed back into bed.

  Would it have been like this with Eadwine, Aethelind wondered to herself. She suspected he would grunt less and kiss more. She had liked his kisses – and there were one or two liberties that were permitted between betrothed couples – She quivered a little at the memory, and Hereward’s big simple face beamed happily.

  “You like that?”

  Aethelind tactfully guided his pawing hands, and discovered that, yes, she did like that. Hereward was clumsy but he had not been brutal. It was supposed to hurt the first time, anyway. She ran her hands hesitantly over his tangled fair hair. It was thick and springy and would probably look quite attractive if it was clean and properly cut. In fact, Hereward was quite good-looking, in his broad, blond, uncomplicated way, like a large friendly hound. Perhaps he could be trained.

  Hereward rolled off and lay gasping like a stranded fish. Aethelind watched his broad chest heaving and the light catching his golden chest hair. Yes, he was definitely a good-looking man. It had hurt hardly at all this time. In fact, she thought she would quite like to try again. Preferably after she had given him a bath.

  This time, he didn’t fall asleep as soon as he recovered his breath. Instead, he heaved himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

  “Aethelind –?”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “The King has granted me this hall and the lands.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She had guessed that would happen.

  “I want you to stay here.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Success. He would guard her along with the rest of his property. She was safe until he tired of her, and it was her business to make sure that did not happen soon.

  Unexpectedly, he reached out and stroked a coil of her hair where it lay loose on the pillow.

  “I’m sorry about your father, lass.”

  “Yes, my lord.” A strategic tear slipped from one eye and trickled down the side of her cheek.

  Hereward’s gaze rested on her face. His eyes were a warm blue, not at all like Eadwine’s cool grey-blue. Much nicer, Aethelind thought, guiltily. And she was feeling an irresistible impulse to run her fingers through his chest hair. Eadwine’s chest had been almost hairless. She could still remember the disappointment.

  “You were a maid,” Hereward said.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  He reached out and blotted away the tear with a corner of the coverlet.

  “I’ll marry you,” he said gruffly, and got out of bed.

  Marriage! She would have a home of her own and a household to run and servants to order around and, if Frija was kind to her, babies. Aethelind had no need to think about her smile this time.

  “Yes, my lord!”

  Eadwine woke as the first pink fingers of dawn strayed over the dark hills in the east. Samhain Eve was past, and as far as he knew he had been visited by nothing more supernatural than a dog fox passing by on its own business and something small and furry that had taken cover under his legs from a hunting owl. But for some reason he felt refreshed, as if after a night of peaceful sleep. On Shivering Mountain the fires were dying down, though the noise was if anything louder than ever, the drumbeats replaced by shouting and yelling. Well, at least that should wake even a man with a two-barrel hangover. He grinned as he ran down the eastern slopes of the hill into the Derwent Valley, leaping through rocks and heather with reckless abandon. He did not bother to divert downstream to the bridge, but instead stripped, threw his clothes in a bundle to the far bank and plunged into the river, revelling in its cold freshness. Down here in the valley the sun had not yet risen over the hills, and his breath hung in clouds in the air as he dressed. They had left their provisions for the journey hidden in the woods above the track yesterday, so that they could not get muddled up with the village’s food, and he retrieved them before hurrying down into Derwent Bridge.

  The village was still deserted, which was annoying. It was properly light by now, and he wanted to be on his way. Where had his friends got to? Was he going to have to go up to Shivering Mountain and roust them out of hedges and ditches? He buckled on his sword-belt and was considering whether he could carry all their weapons, Drust’s shield and four packs – and deciding that the answer was probably no – when he heard someone approaching. One person, not three, and much too light of foot to be any of his friends.

  A sobbing voice called his name, “Steeleye –!” and faded away into a despairing wail.

  He ran to the gate, and a small dishevelled figure threw itself weeping into his arms. Luned, white, exhausted, struggling for breath and trembling as if the Host of Annwn itself was on her heels.

  “They’ve got him!” she howled. “They took him to the fort! Oh, Steeleye – they’ve got Lilla!”

  Chapter 13

  Eadwine hauled himself up onto the river bank for the last time, wrung out his cloak and the skirt of his tunic, tipped the water out of his shoes and squeezed as much as he could out of his hair.

  “I – th-thought you’d drownded –” Luned quavered.

  “And then you’d have been stuck on the wrong side of the river with nobody to carry you back across,” he teased, before remembering that to Luned even crossing the tributary river was liable to be a terrifying venture into unknown territory. “It was only a loose rock, lass, and I didn’t even drop anything – Shh!”

  He threw himself flat on the bank among the piled packs and gear, and pulled Luned down too, as a troop of horses clattered past along the road. Raising his head cautiously to peer through the bushes, he saw that there were about half a dozen riders, all bearing spears and heading in the direction of Derwent Bridge. Leaving the track and crossing the river had been a good decision, if an uncomfortable one.

  Luned’s eyes were saucer-shaped in her pale face. “Were they looking for us?”

  “As they didn’t see us, it doesn’t matter.” He loaded swords, packs and Drust’s shield over his shoulders, and picked up a spear in either hand. “Come on, let’s get up into the woods before any others come. Are you sure nobody uses these woods?”

  “No,” Luned panted, trotting beside him with Lilla’s sword buckled proudly over one shoulder, the two lightest packs on her back and also with a spear in each hand. Between them, they were just able to carry all the gear. “No, on account of the river’s being hard to cross, and the only bridge being right up under his lordship’s nose at the fort –” she shivered. “– so you can’t drive pigs across and you can’t get a cart in for firewood, so nobody comes here at all.”

  The woods clothing the steep slope on the south side of the tributary river certainly looked as if no-one had entered them since the dawn of time. Gnarled oaks, venerable ashes, tall sculpted pines, hazel bushes, hawthorn, brambles, bracken and ivy all grappled for light and air. There was no trace of a path made by anything bigger than a woodlouse, and the floor was an ankle-twisting tangle of mossy hollows, suddenly-collapsing hidden burrows, rotting tree stumps, projecting roots and snaring brambles. Lo
w overhanging branches that snagged packs and caught at clothes and hair added another hazard. At least it looked as if his instinct had been right – this would be a good place to hide. No horseman could follow them in here.

  Burdened as they were, it took half a morning of slipping, stumbling struggle to traverse the north slope and work a way round onto the western flank of the hill. Here Eadwine stopped, much to Luned’s relief, and left her with the packs and most of the weapons while he went on alone.

  He had guessed that, if his understanding of the geography was correct and his sense of direction had not utterly vanished, somewhere on this western flank he would find a vantage point over the fort. He had been right. A few minutes’ cautious prospecting found a slight knoll, clothed in oak and hazel, which seemed to look straight across to the fort. If he could climb one of the trees –

  A sound in the distance made him tense, every nerve jangling a warning. The staccato crack of a snapping branch and the rattle of thorny twigs suddenly caught and as suddenly released. The shrill note of a bird’s alarm call. The sliding tumble of falling earth as something – someone – slipped on the loose slope.

  Luned was sound asleep where he had left her, curled up among the packs like a mouse in its nest. He picked up two spears, shrugged off his cloak and shoes, and went hunting.

  This was his element. This silent stalking of prey through the shadowed woods. He knew how to avoid the dry patches under trees where drifted leaves might rustle, how to roll his weight smoothly with each step so that his bare feet felt every irregularity in the ground and not even a twig would turn or crack, how to sense a thorn snagged in his clothing and stop to release it before it made a sound.

  Something pale flashed briefly through the trees, just where he had expected the intruder to be. He balanced one of the spears in his hand. Even left-handed, he could split a sapling at this distance. Someone was creeping through these woods, where no-one ever came. Someone in a pale garment, someone who was trying to move quietly but who was no expert in woodcraft.

  Someone who was singing a snatch of Attacotti Nell in a low voice, a voice that, although breathless, was much more musical than Drust’s and had a strong Brittonic accent.

  Eadwine relaxed. He could think of three people who might sing Attacotti Nell with a Brittonic accent, but only one of them was likely to have ventured into unknown woodland.

  Severa shook out her wet skirt – she too must have forded the river – and sat down on a log beside Luned. “No, I didn’t know you were here until you jumped out at me,” she admitted. “How did you appear out of thin air like that?”

  “Magic,” said Eadwine, pleased that his woodcraft had not deserted him.

  Luned looked awestruck, and Severa quirked an eyebrow. “Yes, and I’m the Empress of Rome. But it wasn’t hard to guess where to start looking when you weren’t in the village. Where else would you be, except in the woods where nobody goes? And I thought you’d be trying to get a look at the fort.” She peered through the hazel bushes screening the knoll. “You mean to get them out?”

  “Lilla said you shouldn’t!” Luned interrupted. “He said I was to warn you to hide so they wouldn’t find you, and tell you to go right away and not bother about them. ‘Tell him to save himself’, that’s what he said.”

  “And you’ve told me, and we’ve done the first part of it,” Eadwine retorted. “So it’s up to me if I ignore the rest of his advice.”

  Severa put a comforting arm round the girl’s shoulders, and looked across at Eadwine.

  “How?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Good question. Were they hurt?”

  Severa shook her head. “Not when they were taken past the chapel. They were all walking, as far as I could see between the guards.”

  “His lordship said they wasn’t to be hurt or – or – or – anything –” Luned faltered. “Alive and unharmed, he was yelling when I ran away.”

  Severa nodded. “That sounds like he wants them for slaves. His lordship does well out of the slave trade. He raids all summer, all the lands within a few days’ ride, and about now – after Samhain but before the snow closes the passes – a trader generally comes over the hills on the army-path and brings iron and copper and salt and gold in and takes lead and wool and slaves out. His lordship keeps the little girls for himself, his warband gets the pick of the women, the trader takes the boys, the women the warband have finished with and the men he can get a good price for, and the ugly men work in the mines until they drop –”

  Luned shook her head vigorously. “No, no, no. It’s not that, it’s not. They were looking for Saxons.”

  Fear ran icy fingers up Eadwine’s spine. “Why?”

  “There’s a big reward for one. Some Saxon prince, they said. They were shouting a name. A funny name it was – ”

  Eadwine knew what the name would be even before Luned had stumbled through the unfamiliar syllables. They had stayed here too long, cocooned in illusory isolation, and now the outside world had caught up with them. Did Aethelferth the Twister have allies even this far south? Surely not. But how else had the Lord of Navio found out about Eadwine of Deira?

  “Never heard of him,” he said steadily.

  Severa was frowning. “Why search here, of all places?” she wondered. “A Saxon prince would stand out like a white hare in a snowless winter. Big and blond and beefy and dim and talking his foreign language –”

  “With horns,” Luned added.

  Severa laughed, and then her face changed and for a heart-stopping moment Eadwine thought she had guessed. She shot him an odd glance. “Are you sure your Ashhere isn’t a Saxon prince in disguise?”

  “Oh, I’m quite certain of that,” Eadwine answered, with the conviction that comes of telling the absolute truth, and the relief of being asked the wrong question. He peered through the branches, trying to get a good view of the fort. “Where are they held?”

  “In the fort,” Luned said, accurately but not very helpfully.

  “In – in a room underground,” Severa amplified. “I followed them to the fort and heard his lordship give the order.”

  “A cellar? Where is it?”

  Neither woman knew for sure. All they knew was that the fort had a cellar somewhere and that his lordship used it for especially valuable or especially difficult prisoners. But it was said to be made of stone and to have stone steps leading into it, and that was almost certainly enough to locate it. Nobody had built in stone in Britannia for two centuries, so a stone cellar could only be part of the original fort. Eadwine knew three forts intimately, at Eboracum, Catraeth and Derwentcaster, and had a passing acquaintance with half a dozen more. They varied dramatically in size, but they were all built to the same basic design, rather as if the ancient emperors had got a job lot from the giants. The cellar must be the vault under the shrine at the back of the great hall. He knew precisely where the one in Eboracum was – it was still the royal treasury – and he would take a bet with Drust that the one here was in the same position. Assuming that the central building was not built to some strange pattern.

  He looked up at the veteran oak rearing above him, flexed his weak shoulder, cursed it mentally and scrambled up onto the lowest branch. By working back and forth around the tree he was able to climb to a considerable height before he ran out of branches.

  Now he could see the fort clearly, spread out below him in an eagle’s-eye view, about a quarter of a mile away. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was of the familiar rectangular design, oriented north-east – south-west with a gate in each wall. The north-east wall, one of the short sides, was neatly placed across a meander in the river to enclose a flat meadow about half the size of the fort itself. The meadow was dotted with grazing horses, and several timber buildings at that end of the fort appeared to be stables and storage sheds. A track ran out of the north-east gate to the bridge by the junction between the north-western army-path and the track to Derwent Bridge. The main entrance was now clearly the s
outh-east gate, where another track emerged and joined a second major army-path, this one striking south and then climbing to cross the hills on the south-western horizon. Immediately inside the south-east gate stood a lord’s hall, built of wood and roofed in thatch, with the gable ends carved into wolf’s heads. Smoke trickled up from the roof, a constant flux of people hurried in and out, and two doorwardens leaned on their spears on either side of the main door. The Lord of Navio’s hall, where he feasted and his warband slept.

  Behind the hall, in the centre of the fort, sat the usual central building complex arranged around a square paved courtyard. The south-west side of the courtyard was formed by a long aisled hall, with central clerestory and red-tiled roof. The rest of the courtyard was surrounded by high walls with an entrance facing the north-east gate. Eadwine knew that if you walked in through that entrance you would be looking straight across the courtyard and through the hall’s main doorway to the shrine in the centre of the rear aisle. And directly underneath that shrine would be the vault.

  So there was where he had to get to. How? The central building was obviously little used now, its place usurped by the timber hall, but it seemed in fairly good repair. Only the west corner of the aisled hall looked badly damaged, where the roof had lost its tiles and sagged alarmingly. That might be a way in, if he could get that far. The west side of the fort beyond the central complex was occupied by the ruins of at least one large building, and looked deserted apart from a rough track leading out of the back gate in the direction of Combe village.

  He transferred his attention to the defences. Unfortunately, they were also very standard. A high stone wall, twice the height of a tall man, surrounded by a pair of ditches each a good twelve feet wide and probably around four to six feet deep judging from the size of the saplings growing out of them. On the three sides that did not face the river, there were also signs of a third, smaller ditch well outside the main pair. The main gate looked depressingly sturdy and only a small postern was open. There was no reason to think the other gates would be any different. A sentry stood by the postern, and more sentries patrolled the rampart walk along the top of the walls. Eadwine watched for a while and observed that there were four, one to each wall. Assume one guard at each gate, and the two doorwardens, that made ten on duty that he could see. He frowned. Ten made a reasonable-sized warband. How many men did the Lord of Navio have? Half a dozen had passed them this morning, and now another dozen came riding along the army-path.