by Simon Lister
Morgund watched Cael as he made his way along the line of horses now tethered in the makeshift shelter. He was doling out feed before the horses and those he had not yet got to were becoming increasingly restless. Cael nodded to Morgund as he passed him.
‘How are they, Cael?’
‘Well enough but they need exercising soon. They’ll not go too hungry at least,’ Cael answered.
‘Worried the same isn’t true for us?’
Cael patted his belly, made even more bulky by the layers of clothing, ‘Laugh now, Morgund. If we run out of food, I’ll last longer than any of you.’
‘Perhaps, but you’ll be a prime captive for the Adren. Keep them fed for a week.’
‘You shouldn’t joke about that,’ Cael replied and strode off towards the main tent, leaving the feedbag on the ground.
Morgund shrugged, not too concerned by Cael taking umbrage at his remark, and picked up the feed to continue down the line of horses. Ceinwen joined him a few minutes later.
‘Need any help?’ she asked.
‘No. Just finishing off feeding them.’
‘Just bumped into Cael - he hasn’t got much good to say of you.’
Morgund turned his pale eyes towards her and smiled, ‘He can’t take a joke,’ he said and started to move once more along the line.
‘Maybe Sawan’s death has taken away his sense of humour,’ she replied tersely.
‘He doesn’t seem to be the only one in an ill-humour.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You didn’t seem too keen on Arthur releasing him.’
‘Arthur killing him you mean?’
Morgund stopped once more and put down the feedbag. ‘Sawan was a dead man anyway. Arthur just put him out of his agony. I hope he’d do the same for me if it came to it. You’re not a warrior so I can understand how you feel but you are a healer, so you should understand that Arthur was just making it easier for him.’
‘That’s right, Morgund, I am a healer but I’m not an executioner.’
Morgund sighed, ‘Well, think what you like, Ceinwen, but if I’m lying there with my guts sliced open I hope Arthur gets to me quickly.’
‘I’ll be sure to point the way,’ Ceinwen replied and left the shelter.
‘Who needs the Adren?’ Morgund said to the horse in front of him. He continued along the row of impatient horses and as he neared the end, two figures darted from behind the stalls. He started and dropped the feedbag, reaching for his sword before recognising it was Tomas and Elowen.
‘Gods! Is there nowhere to be alone?’ Elowen spat at him as she fastened her cloak about herself. Tomas smiled and shrugged apologetically as he let the smaller Elowen drag him away by the hand.
Morgund closed his eyes, ran both hands up and down his face and took a deep breath. He finished feeding the horses and made his way back to the main tent, careful not to slip on the snow which the constant treading had compacted to ice.
He saw Arthur and Mar’h talking outside the entrance and joined them. ‘Whatever I say next isn’t meant to get either of you angry,’ he said.
‘Been making friends again have you?’ Mar’h asked smiling.
‘Only with the horses. Everyone else just seems to get angry.’
‘It’s time we moved. Staying here with the others gone is just making everyone restless,’ Arthur said.
‘Home?’ Mar’h asked.
Arthur folded his arms and nodded, ‘Yes, but we’ll go via the Belgae villages and pay the Adren camp a visit. Then we’ll take the longboats back across the sea.’
Mar’h and Morgund exchanged uneasy glances.
‘Don’t worry, the Anglians know how to handle them,’ Arthur said. Neither Mar’h nor Morgund looked reassured.
The atmosphere in the camp changed immediately once they heard that they were moving north towards the Belgae villages. Morgund decided he would pull down part of the newly built shelter and fashion sledges from the cut timber. It would be a quicker way for their horses to carry their stores across the snow and it would save burdening them further. Morgund found he had no shortage of willing hands to help build the sledges.
They set out under a winter sky dappled with slow clouds drifting across from the West. Ceinwen was some way ahead, picking the best route through the darkness while behind her teams led groups of horses reined two abreast through the deep snows that carpeted the forest floor. After a mile or so the front team would stand aside, let the others pass, and then rejoin at the rear so passing the hard work of forging a path onto the next team in line.
At the back of the column were the rest of the warriors with several horses pulling the sledges laden with their supplies. The going here was much easier as the horses in front of them had ploughed a path through the snows. Some of the warriors even took off their snowshoes, which resembled small-latticed baskets with one central ridge that could be used to slide across hard snow or ice. Arthur had posted flanking scouts but they found that making their way alone through the snow was too difficult and they inevitably fell behind the column. Rather than risk being lost in the darkness they abandoned the attempt and word was passed that everyone needed to be on their guard for they journeyed blindly.
They stopped every ten hours or so for a few hours rest and to take a main meal. No fires were lit and they had to pick at food that was half-frozen. They were half-frozen themselves despite the layers of bulky clothing that they wore and even the horses had cloaks and blankets fastened over their backs in an attempt to keep the heat in.
They continually packed snow into their leather water bottles and tucked them under their sheepskin cloaks to melt enough to provide a mouthful of water. They wrapped woollen strips under their close-fitting sheepskin caps and around their faces leaving only a narrow gap across their eyes and they gazed blankly at the ground immediately before them as they trudged wearily through the snow-drifted glades of a forest that seemed to stretch on forever in the winter night. They would have made an easy target to ambush but they were only a band of fifty and in the frozen expanse of a dark, empty landscape they travelled the miles unseen and unnoticed.
The days passed with long trudging journeys and short-lived breaks that were intended more to rest the horses than the warriors. Finally Arthur called a halt. As the others set up the main tent and unloaded supplies he left with Ceinwen and Morgund and scouted through the forests to the West. They were fifteen miles from the Belgae villages where an Adren army had settled for the winter. Arthur had been here before with his raiding party and knew enough of the terrain to get them close enough to observe the camp.
Under the pale starlight they surveyed the Adren positions from the edge of the forest. Unlike Eald and Branque the land here was flat. Before them stretched a plain of cultivated land where the forest had been cleared many hundreds of years ago. Three villages were set along the river that meandered widely across the long stretch of cleared land. Snow lay in depth on fields that would go to fallow in the summer to come and, now that the Belgae were gone, the forest would gradually, year by year, reclaim the land as its own once more.
The Adren camp stretched across all three villages and covered nearly all the ten-mile length of the plain. Their fires and shelters were spaced out and roughly followed the winding river that was now frozen over.
Morgund shook his head in disbelief, ‘There must be ten to fifteen-thousand of them out there.’
‘I’ve never seen so many people, not even at Gathering,’ Ceinwen said softly.
‘Certainly explains why none of Cei’s lads made it back,’ Morgund added.
‘We need to find where they keep their stores,’ Arthur said and he started to make his way through the trees that fringed the plain.
The crescent moon cast the colourless expanse before them in a cold light. The nearest shelters and fires were set back a mile or so from the surrounding forest, a lesson learnt after Arthur’s raids. They could pick out some movement along the line of the river but
most of the elongated camp was still. Every now and then they would stop and silently study the camp, hoping to see one area busier than elsewhere, a central storage point.
It was at one of these stops that Ceinwen noticed some tracks leading back into the forest and, crouched over, she followed them some way off into the trees. She returned and frowning, squatted down beside them.
‘What is it?’ Arthur asked.
‘I’m not sure but I don’t think they’re Adren tracks. They come up to this point, about four or five people, then turn and go back on themselves. Surely Adren tracks would come or go to the camp?’
‘A patrol?’ Morgund suggested.
‘Perhaps, but strange for the same reasons. Was your raiding party here, Arthur?’ Ceinwen asked.
‘No. We worked our way round to the other side of the plain.’
‘I’d like to follow them further,’ Ceinwen said looking back into the forest.
‘We need to find their supply centre,’ Arthur said. He turned back to study the camp once more and Morgund did likewise.
‘It could be that the tracks were left by some of Cei’s men,’ Ceinwen pointed out.
Arthur looked directly at her. If there was any chance that some of Cei’s men survived then he would have to explore the possibility. He got up and looked at the tracks himself but knew that Ceinwen could read them better than he could ever hope to.
‘Are you sure they aren’t Adren?’ he asked her. To him they just looked like a confused trampling in the snow.
‘As sure as I can be. The people who left these tracks were taller for one.’
‘Their captains perhaps?’ Morgund asked.
Ceinwen shrugged and looked to Arthur who eventually nodded his assent. They unslung their bows and fished out the bowstrings that were kept inside their clothing to stop them freezing. They fitted them with difficulty, Morgund bending Ceinwen’s shorter bow while she set the string. Ceinwen led the way, following the tracks in the broken moonlight that fell in shafts through the tall trees. Arthur and Morgund fitted arrows to their longbows and strained their eyes searching through the darkness in front and to the sides of them, ignoring the tracks and following Ceinwen. Occasionally Ceinwen would lose the trail and scout ahead, scanning the ground until she found the signs that would lead them on. The arced moon shadowed their path as they slowly made their way deeper into the forest. Arthur was about to call a halt when Ceinwen suddenly stopped in front of them, dropping to one knee and signalling the other two to do the same.
Three hundred yards ahead of them they could see a glow from a fire. They would have seen it from much further away but for the moonlight that cast the forest in winter light. They waited, watching for any movement and listening for any sound but they were too far away to see or hear anything of what lay ahead. Still they waited motionless trying to detect any sign or presence of guards.
Ceinwen looked to Arthur who silently signalled her forward. As she crept forward twenty yards the other two drew their bows and searched the forest ahead of her. There was plenty of cover and plenty of shadows in which a guard could be concealed.
They repeated the advance with first Morgund then Arthur joining Ceinwen. Slowly they drew closer until they could see the fire itself. Bivouacs and crude shelters circled it. Several figures were sat or slumped around the fire and none of them were moving. They were not Adren.
Arthur looked at the other two. Ceinwen shrugged and Morgund shook his head. They drew closer together.
‘Belgae?’ Morgund suggested quietly.
‘I don’t think so, they look more like warriors than villagers,’ Ceinwen whispered.
‘I think they’re Uathach but what they’re doing here...’ Arthur left the question unfinished.
‘Whoever they are, there’s a lot more of them than us. We can come back with the war band and then ask them who they are,’ Morgund said and made to move back the way they had come.
Arthur stopped him and said, ‘No. We’ll find out now. They don’t look like there’s much life left in them. We’ll get closer then I’ll walk into the camp while you two cover me with your longbows.’
‘Arthur, there could be twenty or thirty of them there,’ Morgund pointed out.
‘Then you’d better cover me well and shoot quickly if it comes to it.’ Arthur started to slowly make his way towards the fire ahead.
Morgund exchanged a glance with Ceinwen and swearing softly, followed Arthur. They divided to either side of him, twenty yards apart and stopped at the edge of the clearing as Arthur strode towards the fire at the heart of the clearing.
No one looked up or noticed that a stranger stood by the fire. There were twelve people sat or slumped by the low burning wood, others lay still in their bivouacs or in the crude shelter of lashed together branches. Still no one looked up at the figure that had approached the fire.
Arthur studied them. They were bundled in layers of clothing but the cloaks and clothes they wore were not fit for travelling in the long, cold night of winter. They looked gaunt and starved, each isolated in their own exhausted torpor. Arthur saw a shield half buried in the snow, and on it the Uathach device of the black bear. He recognised it as the emblem of Ablach’s tribe. Their territory was to the North of Anglia and for many years they had proved a thorn in Cei’s side. They were known for their swift and brutal raids along the Anglian coast. The sight of their sails and the sound of their oars had struck fear into the hearts of villages along the shores and rivers of Anglia for several generations but this band of twenty or so did not look like they would ever raid another village again.
Arthur was about to turn and walk away, leaving them to their inevitable fate when he saw one of the hunched figures staring at him. He was dressed much the same as the others, inadequately for the winter but his hair, though rimed with frost and snow was unmistakably straw coloured and he wore the distinctive Anglian circlet around his head. Arthur stared at the bearded face and something about the small, brown eyes and broken nose brought a name from his memory.
‘Berwyn?’ Arthur asked, walking across to him.
‘Arthur? Arthur of Wessex?’ the man asked in a cracked voice. He tried to get to his feet and Arthur, reaching out, helped him to stand. The others around the fire began to stir from their frozen repose and take an interest in the exchange.
‘Yes. I’m Arthur. How did you come to be amongst these Uathach?’
Berwyn’s cracked lips began to work but no sound came from them. He ran a bare, frostbitten hand across his face, dislodging ice from his beard and eyebrows. Relief flooded though his eyes and he put both hands on Arthur’s shoulders.
One of the Uathach lurched to his feet and made to draw his sword. Arthur turned swiftly, holding up a hand to stop Morgund or Ceinwen loosing an arrow. He studied the man who had risen. His eyes were weak and almost closed and the cheeks above the twin plaited red beard were sunken and hollowed. He took a step towards the Uathach while the others watched.
‘Are you the Uathach leader of this band?’ Arthur asked.
The man stood there uncertainly, looking from the two archers on the edge of the clearing and back to Arthur, his sword still half drawn.
‘I am Ruraidh and yes, I lead this band. You’re Arthur of Wessex?’
‘Then sheathe your sword Ruraidh unless you wish to hasten your death. We are both a long way from our homes and a common enemy lies between us and our land.’
The others around the fire rose stiffly to their feet in clothes that cracked with frozen moisture. Morgund and Ceinwen drew their bows to three quarters and shifted their aim from target to target. Arthur ignored those around the fire and placing another branch on the flames, squatted down to warm his hands over the growing blaze.
‘You can die here, frozen and starved or you can live. You decide, Ruraidh of Ablach’s clan,’ Arthur said without looking at any of the figures around the fire.
Ruraidh let his sword slide back into his scabbard. More of the Uathach stumbled fr
om their bivouacs and gathered around their leader.
‘You have food? You can get us back across the Northern Sea?’ Ruraidh croaked.
‘Yes,’ Arthur answered then turned to Berwyn, ‘How come you to be with the Uathach?’
‘Myself and Saewulf were the only survivors when the black army attacked the Belgae.’ Berwyn gestured across the fire to another Anglian who nodded to Arthur. ‘The villagers were massacred and we fled into the forests. Ruraidh and his men found us there and allowed us to join them.’
‘Join an Uathach raiding party?’ Arthur asked.
‘We had no other choice but to starve or be hunted down.’
‘And you were here to raid the Belgae?’ Arthur asked Ruraidh but it was another of the Uathach who answered him,
‘Who are you to make accusations, Arthur of Wessex? You who have plundered and raided our villages for years. You should realise you are alone out here.’
Arthur turned to look at the woman who had spoken with such venom. She was a young woman but a harsh life had etched itself clearly on her pale, lined face. Her dark red hair was unkempt and long but her hazel flecked eyes were sharp and showed hatred.
‘And who may you be?’ he asked.
‘Gwyna, daughter of Ablach,’ she replied in a strong, proud voice.
‘You take after your father, Gwyna, but you should realise it is not I who am alone in the Shadow Lands in winter, nor is it I who starve and wait idly for a cold death.’
‘I would rather that than take help from you or your kind,’ she spat back.
‘You have his pride too,’ Arthur turned from her and addressed Ruraidh again, ‘Why did you let these two Anglians join with you?’
‘We came here to supplement our meagre harvests. The black army took everything and killed everyone. Then they feasted on the dead. Neither Berwyn nor Saewulf seemed to be the enemy after that. They found our boats and burned them. We had no way back across the Northern Sea and we didn’t see any hope in reaching or crossing the Causeway. Were you the one who raided the black army on the plain?’