“We will wait beside the road,” said Hunwald to his men, “that they may pass if their business lies elsewhere, or stop if their business is with us.”
They stopped.
The riders – there were twenty – formed in line along the road, their horses shifting and stamping, striking sparks on stone. The leader turned his horse and rode towards Hunwald and his companions. He held his spear high but, Hunwald noted, he held it loose: a grip that could, in an instant, lower the spear for the charge or pull back the double-tipped weapon for throwing. Hunwald glanced at his own spear with its single leaf-shaped blade. When he got back he would have the armourers make some spears like the man in front of him carried, that he might try them out himself.
“Who are you, strangers, who ride through Mercia without the king’s leave?”
The man spoke roughly, but Hunwald did not answer in kind.
“If we had known we needed the king’s leave to ride the king’s road, then we would have sought it, for I mean no offence against the king.”
“In Mercia, you need the king’s leave to do anything.” The man danced his horse sideways, the animal showing his mastery of the skill. “Even to fart.”
Some among the men lined up along the road laughed at their leader’s jest and one let loose an accompanying blast.
“So don’t expect to do anything here without the king’s leave.” The rider dipped his spear, so its point was directed at Hunwald. “What is your name?”
“My name is Hunwald. I am a messenger, from King Oswine Godfriend to King Penda. If you would not hinder the king’s message, then let me pass.”
“This Oswine: if he is such a friend to God, tell me why he has sired no sons yet, Hunwald.” The rider pushed his horse closer, with the spear still held level, pointed at Hunwald.
“I am the king’s messenger. I have told you my name. You have not told me your name, nor your business with me.”
“Guess. Guess right, and I’ll let you take your message to the king. Get it wrong, and I think we’ll have us some sport. What do you say, men?” The rider half turned back to his men, raising their cheer. But in his turning, Hunwald saw the richness of his harness and the gold of the buckle that held his cloak; he noted the garnets worked into the hilt of the man’s sword and the burnish of his helmet. He saw the bluster and bravado of a boy new come into manhood and unsure yet of his place among men. And he knew who the rider was.
“Peada. Son of Penda. Ætheling of Mercia.”
The rider turned back and his face fell into the scowl of a disappointed child. “You guessed…”
“Even in Deira, we have heard many tales of the Red Hand.”
“Do you know why they gave me that name?”
“The tale is that in a duel, when both you and your enemy’s swords had broken, you ripped open his stomach with your hands and strangled him with his own entrails. That’s the story – now that I may, I ask if it is true.”
Peada glanced back to his line of men. “He asks: is it true?”
Their cheer told the answer.
“Then I would ask so strong a warrior to let me pass with my message for the king.”
Peada Red Hand looked at Hunwald with eyes that, in the blood shotting them, told of a night spent in the cups. He had not let his hand drop: the spear still pointed, without tremor or lowering, at the messenger.
“My father has, at last, given me some of my right. Tell your king, when you go back to him, that I am the king of the Middle Angles. Tell your king to mind his thegns and his young men: my father did not give me leave to raid into Deira, but if I am attacked, that is a different matter. Better still,” Peada Red Hand grinned, “don’t tell your king.” He pulled his horse’s head round, back towards the road. “Come, men. We have a land to rule, beer to drink and women to find.”
The Red Hand’s riders cheered, while some among them made clear what they intended to do with the women they found. Peada looked back to Hunwald.
“When you see my father, tell him this: this land is mine now. Let him remember that. Let him remember that well.”
*
“He says the Middle Angles are his now.”
Hunwald stood before the cloaked figure of the king of Mercia, sat upon his judgement seat in the great hall at Tamworth. Although many torches burned in the hall, Hunwald could see little of the king’s face, for his hood cast shadow upon his face. Men said that the king was one-eyed and far seeing, as like Woden as any mortal man might be. Indeed, some began to whisper that the king was the god himself, walking among men.
The hooded figure on the judgement seat merely nodded. Hunwald waited. He had given his message; he had passed on to the king his son’s message.
“I will give my answer on the morrow.”
Penda, king of Mercia, watched as the messenger returned to his men, sat about a table further down the hall.
So. Oswine asked for aid from his tribute lord against “the cruel and rapacious king that most sorely afflicts him, raiding his thegns and waging unjust war against him”.
Oswiu.
At the name, Penda’s hand went, without thinking, to his face, to where his eye had been before the raven plucked it out.
Penda had watched Oswiu’s son grow into a man; watched him grow alongside his own eldest son and outmatch him in every way, save the simple strength of arm and thew.
If Woden had blessed him through the taking of the eye, then why had he not spread that blessing to his seed too? Instead, he had a brute and a fool as his eldest son, while Oswiu’s boy had the wit of his father. At least Wulfhere, his second son, showed sign of wit – but he was yet a boy and there were many dangers left still in his growing.
“Wihtrun?” He looked around for his priest and saw him, sat on his own, as was his wont, by the fire. “Wihtrun.”
The priest, hearing his king’s call, looked up from the fire lines. He had been watching the flames move over log and ember with squinted eyes, searching for some trace of the patterns of wyrd. But he had seen nothing.
“Lord.”
Penda beckoned him over. “What god did I offend in siring Peada? Was it Frige? For I know that if you mate a dog with wit to a bitch with wit, then the pups will have wit too. Yet I have wit, and so also Cynewisse, yet the first fruit of our mating is… is Peada. What god did I offend, Wihtrun, in my rutting, to produce such a whelp?”
“Wulfhere, from what I have seen and from what I hear tell, has his father’s wit.”
“Wulfhere is a child. Peada is grown, and lest he turn on me I have given him somewhere to rule. I thought the land of the Middle Angles would provide little chance for even one as he to cause trouble, yet now I receive message from Oswine, calling on me for aid and arms against Bernicia. So I have, through an excess of wit and cunning, put my fool of a son right in the path of war. He will be pleased.” Penda slowly stood up. “Read the runes for me, Wihtrun. What say wyrd and the fate weavers? Should I go to war now, at last, with Oswiu? I have waited long.”
The king watched his priest withdraw towards the fire. Men, seeing him come, pulled away, and those that did not see were nudged back when others saw Wihtrun squat by the flames and begin to run his hand over them, the yellow tongues running over his fingers. From deep in his throat, Wihtrun set a hum, low and continuous, so that it seemed he never drew breath but exhaled one continuous stream of sound.
Penda looked around his hall. The messengers from Deira sat in a quiet, wondering group, eyes flicking to the richness of the hangings and the tattered banners that told tale of battles won and kings brought down. His own men were largely away now, sent out from the king’s great hall at Tamworth to gather and bring the food renders and to give justice, in the king’s name, to the countless petty disputes that divided farmers and neighbours.
“Cynewisse.” He called for his wife and, as always, she heard. Whatever she might be doing, Cynewisse always had one ear tuned to her husband, ready to answer his call should it come. She came n
ow, and stood before him.
Penda held out his hand to her. “Come,” he said. And taking her hand he led her to the room that, alone in the great hall, he had to himself and whomever he wished to share it with.
Penda sat upon the bed and lowered the hood from his head.
Cynewisse smiled slowly and began to untie her belt.
Penda felt his loins tighten. But that was not why he had called his wife aside. “No,” he said. He patted the bed. “Sit down. I would have your counsel first, where none other might hear us.”
“Lord?”
“What think you of our son?”
The queen made no answer for a while. Then she shrugged. “If I were a man, I should say I would want Peada beside me in the shieldwall but never over me, upon the throne.”
“Will he stand aside for Wulfhere?”
“No. He is proud, and though he will not say, he knows he has not the wit of many others. This fires the anger that is within him. He will stand aside for no man.”
“That is what I thought.” Penda glanced at his wife. “Did you do aught to offend Frige when you brought him to birth? You made the sacrifices?”
“I did everything, lord.” Cynewisse smoothed her hands down over the lap of her dress. “He was my first. Would I do other?”
“No, I did not think so. But I do not understand how you and I may have produced a son such as he. Do you?”
“He-he is your son, lord. There is no other.”
“I can see he is my son, in his flesh. But I do not see how he is my son in his wit.”
“Mayhap, now you have given him the Middle Angles to rule, he will learn. It… were hard for him to have such a father.”
Penda looked with some surprise at his wife. “How so?”
“He wished, always, to be as you – and yet there was no matching you.”
“How could there be, when he was a child and I a man?”
“A man might see that – but a child?”
Penda nodded slowly. “Yes. I see.”
“But it is as well you have sent him away. Peada seldom thinks on that which is not set before him and, away from here, he will not have his brother before him.”
“You saw that too?” Penda asked.
“Yes.” Cynewisse sat with her hands upon her lap and her head bowed. “I was beginning to fear for Wulfhere.” She looked to her husband. “But with Peada and his men gone, he will be safe.”
Penda smiled, but it was a bleak smile. “As safe as man or boy may be in this middle-earth.”
“Do not say that, lord.” Cynewisse looked down at her hands again. “I have lost too many.”
“I as well.” Penda put his hand on hers and the queen looked to her husband with gratitude. Then Penda stood up and began to unloose his belt. “Come, I will give you another.”
The queen began to smile.
*
He was a bird, a great black slaughter bird, flying over the earth. Beneath him, the ground ran wet with months of rain so that rivers flowed over their banks, and streams became rivers. Through the wind hiss, he heard the cries and clashes, the screams and shatter of battle. Without thought, he turned his wings and, riding the moving air, he slid down towards the battle. Others of his kind had heard it too and were there already, circling in great gyres, waiting for the roars and shouts to give way to the sobs and moans and long, sighing silence of the dead.
He joined them, circling, seeing the armies beneath, but already the dead more than outnumbered the living, and as he watched, the last few fell, and those that brought them down were themselves, in their triumph, swept away as the bank collapsed beneath them and the river pulled them into its silence.
The victors floated downstream. The vanquished, just as dead, lay broken and pierced upon the ground, mixing the mud into a dull red paste.
The slaughter birds began to circle down and he among them. The ravens, slow stepping, moved among the dead, their heavy, sharp beaks turning one way then another as they looked for the bright morsel, the first easy fruit of their battle spoils. The eyes. They always went for the eyes first.
Stepping between the corpses he saw a great pile of bodies, with banners trailing in the mud about them, as if here a group of men had fought and died, making their last defence against death. Trying to protect one among them.
There. Half buried in the heap of bodies. Marked by the richness of his armour and the fury of his foes. That was the one these others had been trying to save. The slaughter bird tilted its head and fixed the corpse with its bright, black eyes. He saw a single eye stare back at him. The bird saw the eye blink.
He was buried. He was buried with bodies, among bodies, so that he was not able to move arm, nor leg, nor even finger. All that he might move was his eye. His one, his single eye. And with that one eye he stared at the raven. He looked at the slaughter bird as it tilted its head, first one way then the other. He saw it dip its head towards him, and call its coughing, rasping call. He saw it step over the face of the man before it, its claws finding ready purchase in flesh slack in new come death.
He was in dream again, and knew it, and could not escape. The bird stepped closer.
He knew he must not move his eye. He must not look aside, nor blink, nor give any sign of life, for the slaughter bird liked best to pluck the last life from the dying. And he was not dying. Though he was trapped, pinned beneath the dead, he felt no wounds. Only the weight of the dead.
The slaughter bird stopped.
It ducked its head and called again, turning to look behind.
He looked to where the bird looked, and he saw a man, moving through the battlefield – the only man upon it. A man cloaked and hooded. His face was shadowed, but in his hand he carried a tall staff, and as the hooded man moved through the field of slaughter, he prodded the dead with his staff.
The raven called again and the hooded man turned towards it, making his way between the bodies, but now walking with urgency. The hooded man stopped in front of the mound of the dead, and the slaughter bird ducked its head and pointed with its beak. The man bent down and looked to where the bird pointed, to where you lay, trapped among the dead.
He pushed his staff in among the dead, until it pressed against your face, wood on cheek.
But you made no sound, nor did you move.
And the hooded man began to roll the dead off you, sending them rolling down the slope, one by one, so that you felt the weight on you gradually lessen. First, you could move a finger and then a hand, then one arm, then both arms, and finally a leg, as the bodies were rolled off you.
The weight gone, you felt the rain falling, wet upon your head, and you stared up at the man standing over you, with the raven, the slaughter bird, perched upon his shoulder.
You spoke then, asking his name. But the man shook his head against the name you gave him and, slowly, he pulled back his hood so that the blood light shone upon his face and you knew him, you knew him…
*
Penda woke, panting, sweating. “Oswald.”
Cynewisse, alert as ever to her husband’s needs, woke with him.
“What is it?” she asked, putting her arms around Penda.
But the king shook her off.
“Find Wihtrun. Bring him to me.”
For once, Cynewisse hesitated, wondering whether she should leave Penda when she could see the fear sweat breaking through his skin.
“Now,” Penda snapped.
Wrapping a cloak around her, Cynewisse slipped from the king’s chamber. There would be slaves waiting outside whom she could send to find the priest while she summoned her own women to dress her. While the king, in such mood, brooked no delay in his wishes being carried out, it was not meet that any more men than absolutely necessary should see the queen in such disarray.
While the queen went to do his will, Penda sat upon the edge of his bed. He was, he realized, shaking. He looked down, from the memory distance into which he was staring, to see his hands trembling.
&nb
sp; Oswald.
“Why won’t you stay dead?”
He had watched Oswald die. He had hung him before Woden’s tree. Yet such was the fame of his powers to heal and protect that the very earth where he had fallen was being dug away, so that now there was a pit some five feet deep at Maserfield. Penda had forbidden the taking of relics from the battlefield, even posting a guard, but it made no difference. In the dark of night, when there was no moon, the locals would creep upon the battlefield, past the sleeping guards, and scoop more earth into bags and cups, to be mixed with water and drunk for the griping disorders, or mixed into a poultice for the sweats or boils and tumours.
“Lord.”
Penda looked round and saw Wihtrun waiting at the door. He nodded leave to enter and the priest came in.
“I asked you to read the runes of war with Oswiu. What tale did they tell?”
The priest rubbed his hands together.
“The – the runes were not clear, lord. I could not tell what they said.”
“Dreams tell sometimes of the working of wyrd, do they not? Hear mine then, and tell me what it means.”
The king told the priest his dream. At the last, still staring into thought, Penda said, “I have dreamed a dream like this before, many times. But then, always, I was lying among the dead, trapped by their weight, as the slaughter bird picked his way over the bodies towards where I lay trying not to blink, lest the bird see my movement and pluck my eye out. But in dream I always blink, and the raven sees me and pulls my eye from my head. This time, though, there was another moving through the bodies, a figure cloaked and hooded. I thought it must surely be the Lord of the Slain come to claim me. Then, indeed, he pulled the bodies away that I might look up and see his face. But when I looked, I saw not the face of the Battle God, but the face of my enemy: the face of Oswald.
Oswiu, King of Kings Page 28