Oswald: Return of the King

by Edoardo Albert

  “The new king, Oswald, is a follower of the new god as well, and his strength grows the greater. If you would have the old ways come back, Wihtrun, then have the gods give me victory! The kings will follow the god of battles – but for now they are not sure of his name.”

  “Lord, give me a gift for the Battle God, and he will favour you.”

  Penda looked at the priest. “Tell the Battle God, if he wants gifts, then to give me victory, and I will give him gifts: I will give him so many gifts the branches of the blood tree will break.”

  “But you have the son of a king…”

  “I will not give him.” Penda stopped, feeling his chest contract, as if ropes were tightening around it. “Not yet.” He looked up at the blood tree. “Was it such a tree Woden hung from?”

  “Yes, such a tree.”

  Penda nodded. “So I thought.” He turned to the priest. “I feel it too. I feel the old ways, the ways of our fathers, slipping away. I would not lose them.” He pointed up at the tree. “Tell them, tell all the gods, but most of all tell the Slaughter God, Woden, Lord of Battles, that if he would have the old ways remain among our people, then he should give me victory. Tell him that victory will bring him sacrifice, rich sacrifice in gold and red. Tell him that, Wihtrun, then ask the fate singers what wyrd they have woven.” The king sheathed his seax, which he had been holding loosely the whole time he had been in the grove. “Even the gods are bound in wyrd, Wihtrun. That is what you learn in battle, in the clash of shieldwalls and the screams of men. The gods too are caught in its thread.” The king tapped the end of his seax, eyes downcast as he thought. “If I could find a way to cut its web, then I would fear nothing. Nothing.”

  *

  “You ask if we will make alliance with you against Northumbria?”

  The king of Gwynedd, Cadafael, rose from his throne, where he had sat to receive the visitor from Mercia. “You ask if we will carry sword to the killers of our king, to the murderers of our priests, to the despoilers of our land?”

  Eowa stood before him, travel-stained and weary. The winter was rolling north – it had not yet arrived in full force, but the ways were hock deep in mud and all he had seen for the last few days’ travelling was rain.

  “I come from Penda, king of Mercia, and yes, I ask this.”

  “Then I say yes. I say yes, as sheep upon our hills, as streams in our valleys. I say yes for the sake of Cadwallon, my cousin, the furious stag who drove our enemies from our land and fell far from it. I say yes for his father, Cadfan ap Iago, who sleeps alone when beside him should sleep his son. I say yes for his sister, Briant, who sleeps now too. I say yes for all my people. We will ride with you and kill this son of the Twister.”

  Eowa looked around the hall, all but bare of men.

  “How many will ride with you when you come?”

  Cadafael gestured to the winds. “There are many not here now; they have returned to their households, to their fathers and their wives, but they will ride with me in the spring.”

  “We will go against Oswald as early as the first greening of the willows. How many of your men will come then?”

  “There will be many men,” said Cadafael. “Many.”

  Eowa nodded, as if satisfied. “How many?”

  “Enough,” said Cadafael. He came down to Eowa and stood in front of him. The Mercian stood a hand’s breadth taller than the king of Gwynedd. “I will send word to our brothers across the sea, to the Lord of the Isles and the kings of the north. With you, with Mercia at our side, we may finally drive the sons of Ida from their stronghold; a thing that Urien of Rheged would have done if not for the treachery of Morgant. Now, together, we make alliance and destroy the Idings for good and all.” Cadafael smiled. “With the kings of the north and the Lord of the Isles, there will be more than enough men to destroy the Idings and take back our land.”

  *

  “Where are they?”

  Eowa rode to Cadafael, king of Gwynedd. He pointed past the king to the warband that followed him: some fifty men astride the wire-haired ponies of the hills, their spears held aloft and glittering in the bright spring light.

  “You said you would bring the kings of the north and the Lord of the Isles with you. Where are they?” He glanced back to where Penda waited, at the head of the warband they had brought from Mercia. With the contingent Cadafael had brought, they numbered some two hundred and fifty men. It was a good-sized army, but not what he had promised his brother when he returned from his mission to the kingdoms of the Britons.

  Cadafael pushed his horse alongside Eowa and he leaned to him. “They will come. They sent word that they will take ship and meet us without the walls of York, for it is better for them to take the grey road, the blue path, than make their way through land that Northumbria controls.”

  Eowa turned his horse’s head and rode back to Penda. When they had seen the approaching horsemen, Eowa had ridden ahead, for he alone knew Cadafael’s face and could give guarantee that it was the king of Gwynedd that rode to intercept them.

  “Not that it’s likely that fifty men would attack two hundred,” said Penda, as Eowa made to urge his horse forward. “But find out where the rest of them are.”

  “York,” he reported back. “They will meet us in York, Cadafael says.”

  Penda nodded and sat back upon his horse, looking searchingly at the approaching riders.

  “That is all he could bring?”

  “Gwynedd must have lost many, many men at Heavenfield,” said Eowa. “There’s bare sufficient there for a group of bandits.”

  “We have men enough of our own, so long as Oswald does not hear of our approach. What king has two hundred warriors in his household?”

  “I have heard tell that the kings of the Franks take five hundred, a thousand men to war.”

  “That is Francia. This is here,” said Penda.

  “Let us hope they do not cross the Narrow Sea, then.”

  “Yes.” Penda was not listening. “What of this king, this Cadafael? Is he the match of Cadwallon?”

  “In words, yes, and more so. I spent two days with him and scarce a moment passed in his presence when he did not press me with words. But in deeds? I do not know. Any man of battle would have been with Cadwallon when he fell. A man of words? Maybe not.”

  “Well, let us greet this man of words and hope he is a man of battles as well.” Penda pushed his horse a few steps forward so that it stood alone at the front of the men of Mercia. They were travelling fast and travelling light, so no slow, ox-drawn wagons laboured up the road behind them. Each man carried food for the journey, a cloak for the night, and what weapons he had earned or received. Penda had spent the winter drilling the men of his household, dressing them in the shieldwall so each knew his place exactly, by the very feel and weight and smell of the men pushed in close to either side of him.

  As he sat waiting for the king of Gwynedd, Penda glanced idly to the sky, where he saw the familiar shape of a red kite, soaring upon the wind. It held in its talons the body of some animal that it had scavenged. But then, from above the red kite, a black dagger plunged, a raven croaking its challenge through its butcher’s beak, and the kite, alarmed, made to roll out of its way, but the raven struck the meal from the kite’s claws and followed it. Seeing it fall towards him, Penda realized it was no animal. Then the arm, severed from below a shoulder, thumped dully to the ground and the raven, landing beside it, dipped its head over the meal it had won from the kite, while the men behind Penda pointed and whispered, even as a tremor of fear passed into his own bowels.

  “What was that?”

  Penda turned to see Cadafael, the king of Gwynedd, staring past him at the raven pulling flesh from the arm that had fallen from the sky.

  “Somebody’s arm,” said Penda.

  “Oh,” said Cadafael.

  “It’s all right,” said Penda. “It doesn’t belong to any of my men.”

  “Yes.” Cadafael licked his lips and glanced back to his me
n. “It is not exactly propitious.”

  Penda urged his horse closer to Cadafael. “It is if we make it so,” he hissed. Then he turned to his own men and pointed. “See, the gods send us Oswald’s arm. We just have to collect the rest of him!”

  Nods and laughs, nervous but relieved, spread down the Mercian column. But heads shook beside those who laughed, and Penda saw many men making the sign against the evil eye whenever the raven raised its head to check that they were not approaching to steal its meal.

  But when he turned to see how Cadafael was dealing with his men, he saw the king of Gwynedd was still staring with horrified fascination at the raven and his meal, as if he had never seen a slaughter bird gorging itself upon the battlefield. Behind him, the men of Gwynedd had clustered into pointing, whispering groups.

  “They will break before we even see battle if you do not speak with them.”

  Cadafael’s head jerked around, searching for Penda. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He turned his horse and rode back to his men. Soon, the same message, although in a different language, was spreading among the men of Gwynedd. But there too Penda saw many uncertain glances to where the raven continued to make its meal on human flesh.

  While he waited for Cadafael to settle his men, Penda gestured Wihtrun the priest to him.

  “Did you see that in the wyrd before we rode?” he asked.

  The priest shook his head. “It – it was not clear. I have never known the signs to be so hard to read.”

  “Then what of this? This is a sign from the gods, surely?”

  “The best I can say is that it is as you said. The Raven God gives us Oswald’s arm; it is to us to take the rest of his body.”

  “And the worst?”

  “The worst?” Wihtrun looked around to see no one could hear.

  “Oswald steals from us that which we thought to take from him.”

  “His life?”

  “An arm is a man’s strength.”

  “Our strength.” Penda pursed his lips. “We shall have to make sure the first is the meaning then. Later, when it is dark and our new allies cannot see or hear, make sacrifice for victory, Wihtrun.”

  The priest looked at Penda. “You want me to sacrifice the king’s son? You brought him with us. I saw that he has recovered much from when I last saw him in the autumn.”

  “I did as you said: death would have claimed him if I had not let his wounds heal and given him to eat and drink. But no, I do not want you to sacrifice him. Eadfrith is here for other reasons. I have slaves. I will give one of them to you.”

  “Sacrifice in secret carries not the same weight with the gods as sacrifice in public.”

  “Sacrifice in public would lose us Cadafael and his fifty men. Do it in private and tell the Lord of the Slain I will give him as many sacrifices as he wants after the battle, as long as he gives me victory during it.”

  “Very well. I will make sacrifice tonight.” Wihtrun looked to the sky. “There will be no moon; it will be dark. On such a night, the Shifter oft walks this middle-earth. It is a good night to make gift to the gods.” The priest wheeled his mare away down the line of men, eyes searching for those men, marked by their lack of weapons, who accompanied the army as slaves.

  “We will reach York tomorrow,” said Eowa, pulling his horse up beside Penda. “We should send scouts ahead to see if Oswald is there.”

  Penda shook his head. “Scouts can be captured. Everything depends on surprise. And if he is not there, there will be people in York who will tell us where he is; once we know, we can get to him quicker than news of us can reach him.”

  Eowa pursed his lips. “I do not like riding to a place and meeting when I do not know what awaits us there.”

  “Nothing that two hundred and fifty warriors can’t deal with, I’ll warrant.” Penda patted his brother’s arm. “You are warmaster; it is your task to worry. But I am king, and my task is victory: that we might earn glory and gold for our men. All will be well. I have set Wihtrun to make sacrifice this night – quietly, so Cadafael and his men do not know of it – to the All-Father, that he give us victory tomorrow.”

  Eowa looked sharply at Penda. “Is that why you brought him? Eadfrith?”

  “No, not him. Now he has largely recovered, it was not wise to leave him behind, a temptation to any ambitious thegn who thought to make a move for the throne while I was away. But I brought him for other reasons too, which you will see tomorrow.”

  “Glad to hear there is a reason. I have had two men to guard him the whole way.”

  “You will see,” said Penda.

  *

  “Have you come to tell me why I am here?”

  Eadfrith, hands and ankles tied, looked up at Penda. They had started no fires that night, and only the fading light trailing behind the setting sun lit the face of the king as he stood over the bound man.

  Penda squatted down beside Eadfrith. His hands went to the ground and he picked up a pebble. He held it up in front of Eadfrith’s face.

  “You have endured. Like this pebble, you have endured and I honour you for it. I have given you time to heal; I have fed you.” The king tossed the pebble from one hand to the other. “If you faced me across the duelling cape, you might even win this time.” He threw the pebble back again. “Then again, probably not.”

  “I would not fight you.”

  Penda, in the act of tossing the pebble once more, dropped it.

  “What did you say?”

  “I would not fight you.”

  “But – but you would have to. You are bound to. I killed your father. I killed your brother. You would have to fight me.” Penda held up his hand. “Ah, I understand. You fear losing to me again.”

  “No.” Eadfrith shook his head. “Well, yes, maybe. A little. I would not want to lose again. But even if I were as strong as I once was, even if I knew I would win, I would not fight you.” The bound man turned his face from Penda. “I have done with death.”

  “I do not think death has finished with you.”

  “I hope not. It would be good to leave this middle-earth; I am weary of it.”

  “But what if I gave you your freedom? What if I gave you a kingdom?”

  Eadfrith turned his face back to Penda. “You can give me nothing I want.”

  “But I can.” Penda put his hand out to the ropes that tied Eadfrith’s wrists together. “I can cut these bonds. I can make you free. And I can give you a kingdom again.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “Tomorrow, when we face Oswald, I will ask you forth. I will place you before the men of Northumbria, and then you may speak, and speak in freedom, for you will be unbound. Claim the throne for yourself, for it should be yours. We are in Deira; the men facing us will be the men of your house, the followers of the Yffings. Call on them to come to you, to acknowledge you as king. They will cleave to you, and you will be free, and king.”

  “What of Oswald, my cousin?”

  “We kill him, of course. There cannot be two kings on one throne.” Eadfrith looked away into the dark. “I have no wish to be king.”

  “But do you want to be free?”

  Eadfrith turned his face back to Penda, and tears lay upon his cheeks.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  *

  “Did you do it?”

  The morning sun had barely broken the horizon but the men of Mercia and the warriors of Gwynedd rode towards York, their horses’ hooves rattling over the old road of the emperors. Penda had held his horse back so that the men might pass, until he saw Wihtrun astride his mare, and then he swung in beside him.

  “Did you do it?” he repeated, leaning across the gap between the two trotting horses. “I did not hear anything.”

  “You were not supposed to hear anything,” said the priest.

  “How did you manage it? Even slaves cry out when they realize they are about to die.”

  “He never knew. I woke him and asked him to come with me. He did not wish to, but…” W
ihtrun shrugged. “He was a slave, what could he do? So he came and when we were far enough from the camp, I gave him to the gods.”

  “But how did you do that? It is no easy matter, to kill without sound.”

  “I cut his throat. Blood is black by starlight. I poured it out in offering to the Lord of the Slain.”

  “Did he accept the offering?”

  “H-he took it. But I do not know for certain whether he accepted it.”

  “He must. If he would have worship and sacrifice, I must have victory. He must accept our offering.”

  “Yes. Yes, that is what I hope.” The priest turned to look at Penda and his face was pale. “But I do not know if my hope is justified.”

  The shout went up from the head of the column and was passed down the line.

  York. The old Roman city, its walls still largely intact, was coming into sight.

  “We shall know soon enough,” said Penda and he urged his horse on, up the column to its head. There was the city, rising above the surrounding water meadows, the early sun catching the spires of smoke that rose from within its walls as new-risen wives set to cooking the breaking of the night’s fast. He shaded his eyes against the sun and narrowed his eyes to slits, a trick he had learned from his father that brought greater clarity to sight. Cadafael had promised that the kings of the north would meet them outside York, and there, downriver, he saw the jagged spikes of masts, many masts, moving gently in the current.

  “They have come.” Penda pointed, and Eowa and Cadafael looked to where he indicated. “The kings of the north.”

  “There, I said they would be here,” said Cadafael, and Eowa caught the relief that ran across his face. For his part, Eowa’s relief was tempered; they still did not know if Oswald was in York. But even that anxiety waned as they rode closer, for one of the sharper- eyed men saw the flag of the king flying from the walls of the city.

  Penda looked to his brother.

  “We’ve got him,” he said. “We’ve got him.” He turned in the saddle and raised his arm, waving the men behind to hurry.

  “Five white mares to the man who brings me Oswald’s head,” he shouted. “On.”

  As the column of horsemen streamed past, Penda stopped the priest. “He accepted our offering,” he said to him. “The All-Father has taken our sacrifice.”