Paths of Exile

by Carla Nayland

  “I know you did. I heard you fought very well.”

  “Then why are you angry? I thought you would want them to fight back.” Treowin sounded bewildered, like a child that has been slapped for no reason.

  Eadwine sighed inwardly, and sat down. Treowin sheathed his sword and sat beside him, now with something of the manner of a dog hoping for a pat. “Are you still angry?”

  “No. I’m thinking what to say. Look, it is true that you have fought in more shield-walls than I have, and in that respect you have more experience than me. But here we are always fighting an enemy far stronger than we are, and all is different. March fighting is stealth and murder, Treowin, nothing but stealth and murder.” He sighed. “Maybe there is glory in the shield-wall, as the poets say, though it did not seem so to me at Eboracum. But here there is never any glory in the means. So you must never, never lose sight of the end. Have you given thought to why lords and warriors exist? Yes, I know that men of our class are born to it, and a sword is more interesting than a plough, and more girls are drawn to a man with a spear than a man with a spade, but apart from that? Why should some men drink and fight while others work? It is because not all men are capable of being warriors. Why do you think I asked for volunteers rather than ordering all Deornoth’s folk out on military service, as I have the right to? Because the twelve who have come have made their own choice and will be far more effective than fifty who are compelled unwilling to the fight. But does that mean those who do not want to fight are worthless? Of course it does not. I do not grow corn or build a house or work iron, yet I expect to benefit from the skills of those who do all those things. It is only fair that those men who do not have the temperament to fight benefit from the skills of those who do. They feed us, we protect them. A lord is the helmet of his people, Treowin, not their scourge. His job is to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of his people. This is not the same as bringing the greatest harm to his enemies, and nor is it the same as bringing the greatest glory to himself. By murdering Black Dudda’s slaves and beating up those who pay their rents, you did Black Dudda little harm and you brought down much suffering on the heads of other people. My people. That is why I was angry. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, yes!” Treowin agreed, so eagerly that Eadwine suspected he had not taken in a word. “You’re right, of course you’re right.”

  “Then come to the fire. My friends are willing to accept you, if you give them a chance. And tomorrow they will see how well you can fight.”

  Treowin hesitated. A man and a girl ran past hand-in-hand and disappeared, giggling, behind a gorse bush. Treowin stared after them, and swallowed. “Tomorrow –” he began and broke off. He swallowed again and jerked his head in the direction of the ‘Pictish’ campfire, where Drust was beginning a raucous performance of Attacotti Nell. “They might all be dead tomorrow! And they sing and tell tales and gamble and – and – lie with women!”

  “Seems a reasonable way to spend your last night on earth,” Eadwine said mildly, wondering what this was leading up to.

  Treowin appeared not to have heard. “And there isn’t any mead!” It was almost a wail.

  “Ah,” said Eadwine, grasping what seemed to be the root of the problem. “I’m afraid that’s our way up here. I have very few rules, but one of them is that none of my men gets drunk without my permission. I don’t care to go into battle knowing that the man who’s supposed to be watching my back is already wishing he was dead to get rid of his hangover. We get drunk after the fight, not before.”

  “You fight sober?” Treowin made it sound like a superhuman attribute.

  “More or less.”

  “Even the militia?”

  “I find they copy the professionals,” Eadwine said easily. “Will that be new to you?”

  Treowin nodded miserably. Eadwine sought for something reassuring to say. “If you fight well when you’re drunk, Treowin, you’ll fight even better when you’re sober.”

  Treowin did not look convinced. He was staring moodily at the gorse bushes, where the giggling had given way to a rhythmic sighing.

  Eadwine got to his feet, reluctant to eavesdrop further, and held out his hand to Treowin. “Come on, back to the fire and show me how you use your shield. It must be years since we’ve sparred together and I want you to fight at my side tomorrow.”

  Treowin’s face lit up. “Gladly!”

  “They aren’t coming,” Treowin worried, peering out of the heather. He and the rest of Eadwine’s group lay flat near the top of a shallow peaty slope, hidden from view in the deep heather. Here and there tall bog-cotton stems marked the position of wet ground and moorland pools. A chill north-east wind blew under an overcast sky, but the ground was not deeply frozen and only a thin skin of ice skimmed the pools. It would be a difficult place for fighting, all treacherous ground underfoot, which was why Eadwine had chosen it. Ahead, the slope plunged abruptly into a deep, steep-sided wooded valley. A sticky track, worn down to the orange-coloured clay that underlay the top six inches or so of peat, climbed out of this valley, crossed the shallow slope at an angle, and then turned south to climb a very slight rise. Slight, but just sufficient to provide a reverse slope to conceal Drust’s band of ‘Pictish’ warriors. Only Drust was visible, and then only if you knew exactly where to look. The big man was still as a stone, and blended into the heather like a red grouse on its nest. He too was watching the track. It was the most direct route from Eadwine’s old hall in the Esk valley, now commandeered by Black Dudda’s warband, to Guardian Howe, an ancient burial mound at an important crossroads on the high moors and the traditional site of the local folk-moot. They were expecting Black Dudda’s warband to come panting up the steep slope from the valley. Any moment now. But the track was still empty.

  “What if he doesn’t come?” fretted Treowin.

  “Keep your head down!” Eadwine hissed. “He’ll come.”

  “Why should he?” grumbled Deornoth, who was getting unsettled by Treowin’s fidgeting. “He wouldn’t come onto the high moors for Fulla.”

  “Fulla’s head isn’t worth its weight in gold.”

  Deornoth blinked. “He knows you’re here?”

  “He does now. Weasel went yesterday to tell him I’m hiding at Guardian Howe with only three friends, waiting to be joined by Pictish allies.”

  “By the Hammer,” muttered Deornoth, awed. “You play for high stakes, lord.”

  “My stake in this is the same as yours.”

  “What if they don’t believe him?” worried Treowin.

  “Oh, they will,” Eadwine said easily. “Weasel looks like the kind of man who’d sell his own mother for a couple of drinks. People suspect him of all manner of things, usually quite rightly, but nobody ever yet suspected him of loyalty.”

  “How do you know he won’t sell you? Tell them we’re waiting here.”

  “He doesn’t know. The only thing he asked me was if we were going to use Roman thorns again, because he doesn’t want to cripple his other foot.”

  Lilla stifled a laugh. Weasel’s outrage when he had run into the fords of Esk to loot a body and trodden on a caltrop had been a sight to behold.

  “I wish they’d get a move on though,” groused Ashhere, looking at the leaden clouds massing like bruises on the north-east horizon. “It’s cold enough already, and there’s rain in those clouds.”

  “Snow,” corrected Lilla.

  Eadwine looked at him sharply. “Snow? Are you sure?”

  “That direction, this time of year, no question. Does it matter?”

  “How long?”

  Lilla studied the clouds thoughtfully. “Afternoon. Maybe not til nightfall.”

  Eadwine relaxed. Snow could ruin his plans, but it would all be over one way or the other long before nightfall.

  “Ah!” breathed Deornoth. “Here they come.”

  Two bobbing heads had come into view over the break of slope, where the track changed gradient and plunged down the steep valley
side. Their owners were soon visible, gasping for breath and sliding unsteadily in the slippery clay. One of them was already covered in it, having evidently slipped and fallen somewhere further down the slope. Not for nothing was the track known locally as Lousy Hill Lane. The watchers lay absolutely still, scarcely breathing, as the rest of the warband came into view. Black Dudda barged his way up to the front, resplendent if rather mud-spattered in mail shirt and helmet. Four other men had mail shirts, three of whom also had helmets, and the rest were clad in wool and leather. Weasel danced along beside Black Dudda, pointing eagerly ahead up the track. Eadwine smiled to himself. So far, so good.

  Then he tensed and stiffened, as four more men came labouring up over the breast of the hill. They had no weapons or mail and they were tied together by rope halters around their necks, not unlike a train of pack horses. Black Dudda was evidently anticipating a night on the moors, as Guardian Howe was more than half a day’s walk from the Esk valley, and had brought his slaves to carry supplies. Eadwine grasped Deornoth’s arm.

  “Beortred’s there! Look, the big fellow third in the slaves’ line, fair hair, scarred face. Pass the word! He is not to be killed, understand? I want him alive! Lilla, get over to Drust as soon as we move and warn him. I want Beortred alive!”

  “Right. He’s to be kept for you.”

  Eadwine gave him an odd look. “Yes. Yes, that’s a better way of putting it. Tell them that.”

  Black Dudda’s men came pounding on, striding more easily now the slope had eased, though still out of breath. They passed Eadwine’s hidden group, and reached a certain light-coloured boulder at the side of the track. Eadwine held his breath, waiting –

  Drust did not let him down. A terrifying war-cry ululated over the moors. The empty ridge ahead sprouted a line of howling savages, waving Pictish shields, brandishing spears and screaming for blood.

  Black Dudda had been half-expecting to encounter a Pictish warband, and he was a professional.

  “Shield wall!” he roared.

  Weasel skipped smartly into the nearest hollow, having long since perfected the art of lying low until there was looting to be done. The slaves shambled to a bewildered halt.

  Black Dudda’s thirty-two warriors, professionals to a man, squared up, shoulder to shoulder, ranked three deep, the front row gleaming with mail shirts and helmets and presenting an unbroken line of overlapping shields to the Pictish warband.

  While the rear row presented eleven unprotected backs to the group of seventeen men, two women and five boys who rose silently from the heather behind them and unleashed a storm of arrows, light hunting spears and rocks.

  Eadwine had warned them that the first barrage would decide the fight. Ashhere saw five men fall, spitted with spears and arrows or dazed by crashing rocks, before they even realised their danger. Six more went down even as they turned to face the new enemy. It looked as though it would all be over in a few minutes.

  But then the storm of arrows and rocks slackened. There were few missiles left.

  “Come on!” Eadwine shouted, and leaped forward.

  “Eadwine for Deira!” bellowed Ashhere. “Eadwine for Deira!”

  Deornoth was on one side of him, also yelling madly. Ahead, Treowin and Eadwine ploughed into the remains of the Bernician rear rank, Eadwine with a sword in one hand and a spear in the other, Treowin with a shield strapped to the stump of his right arm and a sword dancing in his left hand. They fought as one man, perfectly matched, each parrying blows aimed at the other, and what was left of Black Dudda’s rear rank buckled before their fury. The Bernician shield-wall broke up as some of the front rank turned to help their comrades behind. On the other side, Drust and Fulla charged in shrieking rage. The shield-wall, assailed unexpectedly from both sides and stumbling on a slippery track and treacherous ground, crumbled into a muddle of individual fights.

  Ashhere and Deornoth ran to catch up with Eadwine, Deornoth stooping briefly to grab one of their hunting spears from the back of a fallen enemy. The man groaned as the blade was wrenched out of his back, evidently still alive, and Ashhere stabbed down hard with his own spear. This was no time or place to take prisoners. Ashhere registered a spearman coming from his left, caught the blow on the shield he had borrowed from Drust, and then punched the heavy iron shield boss into his opponent’s face. The man staggered back, and Ashhere ran on.

  “Eadwine for Deira!” he yelled, and beside him Deornoth copied the cry and jabbed his hunting spear at an enemy arm. More by luck than judgement, the blade connected, the man twisted away, and Ashhere and Deornoth were up with their two comrades. Eadwine’s spear was gone and Treowin had moved to his left side, so that each had a sword-arm free on the outside of the pair and Treowin’s shield provided some protection in the middle. Ashhere and Deornoth moved up close behind them, making a tight knot of four men all protected by each other’s blades.

  But they had no support. The volunteers had run out of missiles, had no weapons, no armour, not even shields, and they hung back from the savage blades and the blood and the screaming. One man had run with Eadwine’s charge and now reeled out of the melee with one arm hanging off and half his face cut away. A Bernician warrior slashed at him with a sword, almost contemptuously, and the man crumpled crying into the heather. The ends of the Bernician line began to curl round Eadwine’s group. Ashhere saw they would soon be enveloped and surrounded, but there was not a lot he could do about it except hang on and guard his lord’s back.

  The battle had shifted ground, and they were on the right of the line now, on the side where the track sloped down into the valley. Ashhere saw Beortred dragging the other slaves with him, aiming for a wounded Bernician warrior sitting dazed on the ground trying to staunch blood pouring from a thigh wound. The wounded man jumped up as he saw Beortred, seized a spear and lunged at him. Beortred grabbed the next slave in the line and swung the man bodily to block the blow. The spear stabbed right through the slave’s back and lodged with the point projecting from the chest. Beortred held the dying slave upright with one arm, grabbed the wounded Bernician with the other, and smashed his forehead into the Bernician’s face. All three fell to the ground in a heap, and Ashhere caught a glimpse of Beortred sawing the neck rope on the projecting blade of the spear, before a swirl of movement blocked his view. The press ahead suddenly slackened, and the little knot of four stumbled forward into clear air. They had carved right through the Bernician warband.

  But Black Dudda was far from beaten. Indeed, the fight was swinging his way. More than a dozen of his men were still standing, forming into a new shield-wall around their commander. Black Dudda was bellowing like an enraged ox, swinging his great gory sword left and right, and the supposed Pictish warband was scattering in terror before the onslaught. Drust and Lilla, back-to-back, were engaged in a fierce fight with two men in mail and it was all they could do to defend themselves. Fulla’s men were backing away, frightened. For all their martial talk, they were farmers and shepherds, unused to the horrific violence of hand-to-hand fighting. They were not ready to face a shield-wall, and Eadwine had never intended that they should.

  He shouldered his way to the front. “Black Dudda!”

  The big man turned. “Who wants him?”

  Eadwine stooped and snatched up a fallen shield. He faced Black Dudda, shield in one hand, sword in the other, and cried for the third time,

  “I am Eadwine son of Aelle, and you are not welcome on my land!”

  Black Dudda snarled. “Turd! Bastard! Offspring of a whore and a weasel! I’ll get you this time!”

  He lunged with his heavy sword, aiming low where the blade would cripple unprotected lower legs. Eadwine leaped up high into the air and the blade passed harmlessly under his feet. He swung at Black Dudda as he landed, but Black Dudda was also fast and deflected the blow with his shield. The two men circled each other, breathing hard. Up and down what was left of the line, private fights were broken off. Men stepped back to watch, knowing that a duel between the co
mmanders would decide the issue. The first flakes of snow came swirling down.

  “No Roman thorns now!” mocked Black Dudda. “No fires, no weasel tricks! No walls to hide behind! You can’t fight like a man!”

  He made a feint to the right, then snapped back like a snake and struck at Eadwine’s sword-arm with a blow intended to take off the hand at the wrist. Eadwine saw the move in time and whipped back out of range. His foot caught in a tangle of heather, he staggered, momentarily off balance, and Black Dudda leapt forward with a yell, aiming a savage cutting blow at Eadwine’s unprotected head. Eadwine flung up his shield just in time, Black Dudda’s heavy blade bit deep into the rim and snagged amid a tangle of splintered wood, and Eadwine jerked the shield towards him so that Black Dudda had to lurch forward a step to avoid having his sword tugged out of his hand. Eadwine jerked the shield in the opposite direction, the sword tore loose, Black Dudda was thrown off balance and with an athletic roll and twist Eadwine regained his feet, ducked under Black Dudda’s wild stroke and sliced his own sword into the back of Black Dudda’s lower leg.

  It was only a flesh wound, not reaching the bone, and Black Dudda stayed standing.

  “You little shit,” he snarled, and rushed forward again, this time cutting at Eadwine’s right shoulder. Eadwine had no mail shirt, and his splintered shield was all but useless. He darted back and only the tip of the sword reached him, raking three inches of blood-welling furrow down his breast.

  Black Dudda’s face contorted into a feral grin. He swung at Eadwine’s legs again, knowing that he need only slow his agile enemy to gain the victory.