Oswald: Return of the King

by Edoardo Albert

  Leading the column, Oswiu rode south and east, keeping the line of hills ahead and to the right. Maserfield lay in the wind shadow of the hills, sheltered from the westerly storms that blew in from over the sea. In the white of the winter landscape, with the trackways and drovers’ paths fresh covered in snow, the mountains were all Oswiu had to navigate by. Squinting for some sign that he was heading in the right direction, Oswiu gave up and called over his shoulder for Brother Diuma.

  The monk pushed his horse up alongside Oswiu.

  “Lord?”

  “Do you know this land?”

  “Not this land, no. But I think, ahead…” He pointed. “Those hills look to me like the northernmost of the hills that rise above Maserfield.”

  “How far after that?”

  “Maybe half a day’s ride.”

  Oswiu measured distance by eye against the speed of the column and the difficulty of the conditions.

  “We should get there tomorrow. Three days from leaving Carlisle.” He turned to Brother Diuma. “Pray, and do not stop praying, that we are in time.”

  Chapter 8

  “The storm is over.” Oswald looked on to a world made white, all the roughness of it smoothed away beneath a cover of snow. First light greyed the black of the eastern horizon, but above stars glittered between the final tatters of cloud. Mist clouded around Oswald as he breathed and, above the horses, the air steamed as the beasts huddled together for the warmth they provided each other, and shifted in the cold before the dawn.

  Beside him, Bassus clapped his hands together for warmth and tried to stamp some feeling back into his feet. They had gone numb in the night, when they had finally stopped, blind in the storm, and made what camp they could, taking shelter behind their horses from the wind.

  “We will get there today.”

  “Good,” said Bassus. He forced a smile. “Battle will warm us up, if nothing else will. But it will be impossible to take Penda by surprise. Against the snow, we will stand out clearly.”

  Oswald shrugged. “At least Eowa will know we are coming as soon as Penda does. Then we may catch Penda between us, Eowa issuing from his hall, us riding up to it. I would still have us approach as close as possible without him seeing us; that way, we shall force Penda to battle. If he were to see us from a distance, he might flee, and I do not think the horses have the legs to pursue him.”

  “Very well. I will order the men ready.”

  As the warmaster set to, ordering the weary men to their feet and to their horses, Oswald stood looking west to the hills. Bran croaked at his feet and the king bent down to him, allowing the raven to clamber up his arm and onto his shoulder.

  “We are nearly there, old friend.”

  The raven croaked and ran its iron beak over his head.

  *

  “Wake up!” Coifi slapped Acca, but the man did not stir.

  They had slept in a stand of trees, hoping to find under their boughs some shelter from the wind, but the cold had crept into their bones in the night, leaching in through the ground and sucking the warmth from them until the feeling had gone from Coifi’s fingers and feet and hands, even his lips. Waking from a fitful doze, he had seen the sky clear through the branches of the trees and felt the air still. But turning to Acca, he seemed as one dead, unmoving, blanketed beneath snow.

  “Wake up.” Coifi slapped Acca again, and finally the scop answered, groaning as his eyes slowly opened. Coifi pulled him to his feet, the snow falling from him.

  “What? Where…?”

  “I thought you dead.”

  “I – I feel dead.” Acca tried moving his hands and legs. “I can’t feel my feet.” He held his hands up in front of his face. “I can’t feel my fingers either.” Fear gripped, griping his bowels. “If I lose my fingers, I won’t be able to play. Coifi, I won’t be able to play.”

  The priest pulled the gloves from Acca’s hands. He took the scop’s hands in his own, moving the fingers, kneading, breathing on them.

  “There. There is some colour in them.”

  “I – I can feel something,” said Acca. He looked up, beaming. “I can feel something.”

  “Ah, that might hurt…”

  Acca was still complaining an hour later when Coifi pointed ahead.

  “There,” he said.

  Crossing in front of them and then turning towards the line of hills was a track, the churned and crushed snow made by many horses following in line after each other.

  *

  “I am lost.” Brother Diuma turned one way and another, searching for a landmark he knew, but the snow had laid its hand over everything, smoothing away all the marks that he might have used to tell where they were.

  “We cannot be lost. Not now we’ve come so far.” Oswiu looked in turn for anything to tell their place, but there was nothing.

  “If we cannot see, then we will have to ask. We ride on. The first farm we see, we take the farmer as our guide.”

  “What if he will not come?”

  “He will,” said Oswiu. “He will.”

  *

  The smoke was the first sign. A column of smoke rising through the glitter of the snow-cleared air. Bassus pointed it out to Oswald. Turning to the riders behind, some fifty strong, he signed for silence, the sign passing down the column. The smoke rose against the line of hills, but its source was hidden from them by small woods, the trees coppiced and pollarded, and the land folding downwards into a final dip before the steady rise to the hills.

  “Send a scout ahead.”

  Bassus pulled back down the column to select the right man, while Oswald rode them onwards, taking a steady pace now, eyes alert for sentries set against their coming.

  The man selected, Bassus pointed him ahead, marking the possible places where sentries might wait, and talking over the best route to keep him clear of watchers.

  “Don’t go too close,” said Oswald. “I just want to know if Penda still invests Eowa’s hold. If there is a camp outside it, and the gates are closed, that will be enough to know.”

  Bassus gave the scout his final instructions and then he rode ahead, the horse barely making a sound over the new snow.

  “At least they won’t hear us coming,” said Oswald.

  Bran, taking pleasure in the contrast of the day’s sun to the previous day’s storm, took wing and flew above the column, croaking his greeting to the other ravens that rose above the snow fields. On such a day, after the storm, there would be carrion to be found. Oswald looked up to the slaughter birds. There would be more carrion for them by the day’s end.

  The column rode onwards, Oswald taking them towards the wood that offered the final cover before they rode down upon the army investing Eowa’s hall. He pointed to the trees.

  “We will make battle plans there,” he said to Bassus.

  “We should be able to see Penda’s army from the wood,” said Bassus.

  “Let us hope he is still there to see.”

  As they neared the wood, the scout appeared, riding towards them, dark against the snow-draped trees.

  “He is there.” The scout pulled his horse up beside Oswald. “There are many tents outside the ditch and fence around Eowa’s hall, and I could see men moving among them. The gate to the hall is closed, and there are men within too, but I could not see how many.”

  “How many has Penda without the hall?”

  “I counted thirty-eight, but there may be more in the tents.”

  Oswald looked to Bassus. “Not many. Not at this time. Eowa said he had thirty men. With our fifty, that is more than enough.”

  Bassus nodded. “Yes.”

  “To the woods. We will make final preparations there.”

  But as they were about to reach the woods, a shout, put up from the rear of the column, came to them at its head.

  Riders, approaching from behind.

  *

  “What in the name of heaven are you doing here?”

  Oswald stood in front of Coifi and Acca, gla
ring at them. The two men, who had dismounted, stared at the ground in front of them. Trees, layered on their western sides with white, surrounded them.

  “Answer me.”

  Acca looked to Coifi. “You tell him.”

  The priest twitched, pulling his raven-feather cloak around his shoulders. Bran croaked disapprovingly. He knew too well where those feathers came from.

  “We would share your doom,” said Coifi.

  Oswald’s eyes flicked to the men gathered around Bassus and receiving instructions. Some ears would be tuned to the conversation their king was having with the two unexpected additions to the warband.

  “Shut up about doom,” he whispered. “Here, come with me. But keep quiet.” Leading Coifi and Acca through the narrow strip of wood, he stopped in the shelter of a holly bush and pointed into the valley below. There, protected by the land folding down after the hills, was the great ditch and fence that surrounded Eowa’s hall, standing stark against the snow. Around it, looking more like white mounds than tents, was Penda’s camp. Men, distant shapes, moved desultorily around it. Within Eowa’s compound there was similar movement.

  “Snow stops even war,” said Oswald. He looked to Coifi and Acca. “Penda is not ready. We will catch him between our forces and Eowa’s, crack him between us. What doom do you see there, Coifi?”

  The priest shook his head. “I – I do not know, lord. But I know what I saw. If you will not hold, then give me leave to come with you, that I may share your doom – whatever it be.”

  “No. You are not warriors. I will not give men – men I need – to keeping you both safe. You will stay here.” Oswald smiled at Coifi. “You will have a fine view of Penda’s doom unfolding.”

  *

  They rode from the line of trees, down towards Eowa’s hall. As they advanced, moving at an easy pace, riding two abreast with Oswald and Bassus leading, the camp beneath them began to seethe with activity, men running to and fro, shouts and orders resounding up the slope towards them.

  The movement was mirrored within the besieged hall. Men ran to the palisade, staring and pointing up at the advancing column of riders.

  “I think Penda has seen us,” said Oswald.

  “I think you are right, lord,” said Bassus.

  When they had advanced far enough, Oswald signalled halt.

  “Dismount!”

  The warmaster’s voice, trained to be heard above the shouts and screams of the battlefield, easily passed to the end of the column. The men slipped from their mounts, slinging shields over shoulder and taking spears in hand, while the horses were picketed behind them.

  Bassus glanced down the slope towards the camp. Similar preparations were being made there.

  “We have the slope,” Oswald said to Bassus as he dressed the men into line, forming the shieldwall. “Make sure we keep it.”

  “It slopes right down to Penda’s camp,” said Bassus. “We can use it to crush him.”

  Looking down into Penda’s camp, eyes slit against the snow glitter, they could see the frantic efforts being made there to form the men into line.

  “Let’s not keep him waiting.” Oswald signed the advance and, in step, shields tight together and spears bristling, they began to make their way down the gentle slope, the snow smoothing the ground beneath their feet and all but removing one of the great dangers for an advancing shieldwall: that a man might trip and fall, taking the men either side of him down too.

  A ragged shieldwall began to form to meet them, desperate shouts calling the men into line.

  Bassus measured the line forming against them.

  “We have the advantage, lord,” he said. “But not by much.”

  “Come on, Eowa, come on,” Oswald muttered under his breath, as they moved down the slope towards Penda’s line. The men had formed up quickly once the commands were given, showing themselves to be experienced warriors. Seeing the way they waited, spears bristling but held loosely, shields tight but not so tight that the men bearing them could not see the enemy, Oswald knew this would be no easy fight. These were Penda’s own retainers and he had trained them well. They wasted no energy climbing a slope to meet an enemy, but waited.

  Oswald, from his position in the centre of the line, glanced past the waiting shieldwall to Eowa’s fortified hall.

  “Come on,” he said again. How much encouragement did Eowa need?

  But then, finally, the gates of the enclosure opened, and men streamed out, bristling with spear and sword, fanning out into line in front of the ditch.

  “We’ve got him!” Bassus shouted.

  And they had. Penda was now trapped between two advancing shieldwalls, one bearing down on his front, the other approaching him from behind.

  “Take the right, Bassus,” Oswald ordered, “and start us up.”

  The warmaster peeled back from his place behind Oswald and ran behind the line of advancing men to take his place on the right wing, ready to try to roll around Penda’s line and force it to disintegrate.

  Reaching his position, the warmaster pushed his way into the line and then, matching the step of their advance, he began to pound the shaft of his spear against the rim of his shield. The men took up the beat, striking spear and sword on limewood, the sound hollow and resonant, rolling over the snow-covered ground and up toward the distant line of hills. Mist rose from the men’s mouths as they began to shout and chant, matching the rhythm of their drumming with the sound of their voices.

  Oswald, in the centre of the chant, made no sound himself. He looked around, taking in the glitter of the snow beneath his feet and the rise of smoke, untroubled by wind, from the hall. Squinting against the glare he looked around, searching for Bran, and saw him black against the sky, riding the rolling levels. He knew Coifi and Acca were watching them from the wood, yet he felt as detached as they, though he marched in the midst of his men.

  Penda was making no move to reshape his line, even though Eowa was forming into shieldwall behind him. Oswald noted that and, unsure what it meant, he signalled down the line for Bassus to slow the advance. The warmaster, seeing the sign, held the rhythm of the march to the same slow beat, rather than speeding it up. Oswald measured the gap between the lines. They were still more than one hundred and fifty yards apart. More than enough space to increase the tempo and, using the slope, to crash like a rockfall upon Penda’s shieldwall.

  Slowing the advance also gave Eowa time to form his line properly. Oswald looked past Penda’s shieldwall, trying to see what was taking Eowa so long, and then he saw Eowa’s banner being brought through the gates, carried by three men, to be set up beside the Mercian’s line. Oswald’s eyes narrowed as he squinted against the snow glare. There was no wind, but it did not look like a banner hanging from the crosspiece of Eowa’s standard. And he knew no standard that required three men to carry it.

  Something was wrong.

  The lines were one hundred yards apart now. Oswald signed down the line and Bassus, his voice rising even over the thump of spear on shield, called halt. The warmaster peered along the line and saw Oswald gesture him over, and again he ran behind the line to him. On either side of Oswald, men muttered, tension rancid in mouth and gut, while the jeers and cries of Penda’s men ran up the slope to them.

  “What’s that?” Oswald pointed to Eowa’s standard.

  Bassus shielded his eyes against the snow glare, but shook his head.

  “I – I cannot tell,” he said.

  “At last, Eowa is advancing. We’ll be able to see it better soon.”

  “Shall I hold the men here?”

  Oswald peered down into the glaring snow light. The sun, high risen now, turned all the snow fields into jewels – flashing, blinding jewels.

  “Yes. We wait for Eowa to advance. At the moment, it looks like Penda is hoping to meet us one at a time.”

  The shieldwall of the new king of Mercia slowly began to advance towards Penda. Keeping pace with it, the three men bearing the standard advanced alongside the line.
Oswald looked for Eowa. At such range it was impossible to be sure, but judging by the armour on show, Eowa marched in the centre, surrounded by his personal retainers.

  “What is that?” Oswald asked the question of himself, under his breath.

  The standard, a single straight pole with a crosspiece from which dangled a strange, thick banner, refused to resolve itself into anything he knew.

  And then he saw it.

  The shape had been there all along, but his mind had refused to see it. It was no standard, no banner; it was a cross. And hanging from the cross, his arms bound to the crosspiece, his feet bound to the upright, was a man.

  The whispers, the murmurs, the shouts and cries going up and down the line showed that others too among his men had seen what he had seen.

  “Who is it? Who is it?” Oswald asked, but the cross was still too far away for any to see who lay upon it.

  “Can you see, Oswald?”

  The voice came thinly over the snow, but it carried and Oswald knew it.

  “Can you see now?”

  “Eowa.”

  “It is Sidrac. Usually we hang traitors in Mercia but, for you, we hung him upon the tree you worship. He lasted longer than your god.”

  Oswald gasped. It was as if water, ice water, had been thrown over him. In an instant, he saw: he saw his folly, and his trust, and his betrayal. And his peril.

  “Get the horses closer,” he ordered Bassus. While the warmaster frantically signalled the two men detailed to guard the picketed horses to bring them closer – no easy task with so many animals and so few riders – Oswald measured the new odds they faced.

  They were not good.

  Penda’s original line all but matched his, man for man.

  Now, he knew that Eowa was advancing not to attack his brother but to fight alongside him. The two shieldwalls would outnumber his own by at least two to one.

  He glanced back to the horses, gauging distance. To try to retreat to them was impossible; Eowa and Penda would catch them as they fled up the slope, and slaughter would ensue.