The Edge on the Sword

by Rebecca Tingle

  “Have they told you where they come from?”

  “They won’t say much”—Osric shook his head—“but they’re straight from the north, I’d guess, from the Danelaw around Eoforwic, maybe. If you want them to talk, Lady, we could make them talk.” He smiled grimly. “I learned my share of tricks with a knife in the wars.”

  “What good would that do?” Flæd demanded. “We can’t let them go—if they didn’t attack us themselves, they’d bring other raiders down on us.”

  “I don’t suggest we let them go.” Osric’s voice was flat and dangerous. The men around him murmured. Flæd couldn’t tell if these were sounds of outrage or of approval.

  “We are King Alfred’s men,” a voice called out beside her. “He offers his enemies an honorable death in battle, and fair treatment after capture, not murder. We will not kill men held helpless among lis.” Flæd had almost forgotten Dunstan was there. Grateful for his words, she swallowed nervously, but she did not break off the level gaze she had aimed at Osric.

  “Ethelred must question these men,” she said as forcefully as she could. “The Danes will come with us in the morning. If our scouts have found no sign of the river, we will look for a farmstead, where a churl may sell us food and horses. Is this acceptable to you?” There was no reply. With effort Flæd maintained the firm set of her mouth as she surveyed the firelit faces a last time. “We will see what morning brings,” she ended, knowing that the words sounded as feeble as she felt.

  “They are not with us,” Flæd muttered as she and Dunstan settled down for the night.

  “They are afraid, but they will see that your plan is right,” Dunstan said with assurance. Flæd pillowed her head on her arm, wishing she could believe him. Fortune’s wheel, she remembered. I am still down in the mud.

  The man who came running in the grey light of dawn forgot to hail them, and Dunstan was on his feet with drawn sword before the thane could gasp out his first words.

  “They’re gone, Lady!”

  “Who is gone?” Dunstan gripped the retainer’s arm as Flæd struggled up.

  “The prisoners, Lady”—the thane twisted around—“and Osric is dead.”

  22

  Dead Letters

  “GET UP!” FLÆD STRODE WITH DUNSTAN AMONG THE MEN, rousting them out of their sleep. She grasped another man’s shoulder to shake him awake and drew a sharp breath of surprise as one of the two young retainers turned his bleary face to her. “Why are you here?” she demanded. “Why did you leave the prisoners?”

  “Osric took our watch,” came his mumbled reply, “told us to get some rest.” So this was how it had begun, Flæd realized.

  “Get your things together,” she told him, moving on to the next sleeper: “We have to leave.”

  With the man who had brought the bad news following along behind them, Flæd and Dunstan went to view the wagon where the prisoners had been kept.

  “They were bound up, and then tied to the wheels,” the man was saying. “We only ever let one free at a time to eat or piss.”

  “How did you know to check them this morning?” Flæd said, confronting the retainer. “Was it your watch?”

  “No, Lady,” the man whispered. “I knew he was going to them.”

  “You mean Osric?”

  He nodded, eyes on his boots. “He went to find out whatever it was you said the king and the aldorman needed to know. He said it was the only way to get you safe to Lunden.” Flæd let out a groan. Osric had thought to serve her best by going against her, and he had paid an appalling price. Beneath the wagon they found his body where it had rolled into a pool of bloody mud.

  “Bashed on the head with a rock,” Dunstan said quietly, “then throat cut with his own knife for good measure.” Flæd could not look at the dead thane. She stood up beside the wagon, sickened by the violence which Osric had planned, the violence done to him. She tried to remind herself that he had chosen to untie at least one of the prisoners, probably to torture him, but the thought did not make Osric’s own end seem less gruesome.

  “Do we know when they escaped?” she asked.

  “He sent the others back to sleep just after it was fully dark,” the cringing thane replied. “I think they have been gone for many hours. They took no horses.” Flæd tried to put these facts together. The raiders had taken no horses. Why? For stealth, perhaps—to insure that the rest of the camp slept through their departure. And maybe because they didn’t have far to go. Flæd grabbed Dunstan’s arm, suddenly very frightened.

  “I think they’re coming back,” she said to him, “and leading the others to us. We have to leave this place, now!”

  The camp was in disarray when Flæd and the two thanes returned. No horses had been saddled yet, and an argument had broken out among the men standing amid their hastily bundled belongings.

  “Is it true,” one man shouted when he saw her, “that Osric is dead, and we leave without giving him burial, or showing some other form of respect for a fallen comrade’s body?” Flæd looked at her little band. She had felt strange about giving orders to fighters far older than she, and this morning’s events had bewildered her with blood and the threat of a new attack. But in this moment, looking at the shouting thane’s face, she forgot her inadequacy. She felt anger at these men’s heedless ways, their squabbling approach to each new problem. They had once been united in their respect for Red, she felt sure, but nothing held them together now, and they would probably die very soon unless that changed.

  “Your friend is dead,” she said in a freezing voice. “He has brought terrible danger to all of us. Stay and bury him if you like. You will not finish before the raiders cut you down.” The voices of the men sprang up again like flames over dry wood, and she shook her head in frustration. “You have another choice,” she said loudly, and the company quieted again. “You can follow me, the king’s daughter whom you pledged to escort and protect. We will keep moving east, as fast as we can. We will leave now.”

  Flæd turned and half ran to her picketed horses. Would anyone help her hitch them to the wagon? She didn’t know, and there was not time to wait and find out. Chirping to the big animals as she gathered up their picket ropes, she jogged with them to the wagon where their harness lay.

  And then Dunstan was there beside her with her bedding rolled and tied. A wagon driver took the horses and led them to their places. The sound of hoofbeats and running feet rose up around her as the company gathered. Flæd let out the breath she had not known she was holding. She took her place on the wagon box, ready to order them forward.

  “Lady,” Dunstan called out from the back of his restless horse, “our scouts!” Looking southward where he pointed, Flæd saw the two riders urging their exhausted mounts toward the company.

  “The river,” one shouted as soon as he was near enough to be heard, “we reached it! And a fresh camp—we think Ethelred’s party stayed there!” Flæd’s heart, which had beat faster and faster as her men gathered around her, felt all at once as if it would burst her chest. They had found the river, and the way to Lunden!

  “Take us there,” she said, trying to show the calm face of a dignified leader. The wagon jerked forward and she caught her balance. We are out of the mud!

  Ethelred’s campsite lay less than two hours’ journey away. Despite the horrors of the last two days, Flæd’s spirits kept rising as they rode into the meadow where the sound of the river filled the air like a great, whispering voice. The Mercians had stayed here less than two weeks ago. Now the West Saxons would be able to follow the marks of feet and hooves, or go along the river if they lost the track. They must not be far from Lunden. We will not stop again for sleep, Flæd vowed. The raiders might be very close.

  But they would take time to get water from the river, and let the horses who had carried the scouts and the ones who had to bear two riders breathe and drink a little. The company dismounted to lead their horses to the water, and Flæd slung waterskins around her neck for the four horses in harnes
s and went with Dunstan along the riverbank.

  The track they followed wound back to the north and west, bringing them up close to a little hill before it sloped back down to a wide bar beside the river where Dunstan’s horse could stand and Flæd could fill her leather pouches. Halfway down the embankment Dunstan’s mare began to toss her head. Then she pulled back so violently that the bit cut her mouth, and bloody foam sprayed over them.

  “What is it?” Flæd asked as the thane tried to soothe the horse who was dancing backward now, and trying to bolt.

  “She sees something she doesn’t like,” Dunstan grunted as the horse jerked his arm again. “Or smells it,” he said, blowing into the horse’s nostrils to calm her.

  Then Flæd smelled what the horse had: a sweet carrion odor. She paced ahead five wary steps and stopped with a jerk. There lay the bodies of a man and a horse. Two arrows had pierced them with extreme precision—the horse through the eye, and the man through the neck. They had been dead for some time.

  “Dunstan!” she hissed. Flæd heard her retainer say a few more soft words as he tethered his horse to a tree, and then he came running to join her. “I know this man,” she told him, swallowing against the bile that rose in her throat. “He was Cenwulf, the Mercian emissary who brought my father news from the Welsh border, and then rode with Ethelred.”

  “The aldorman would have sent searchers for a trusted messenger, if he had gone missing,” Dunstan said, going carefully forward to take a look at the dead man.

  “Unless Ethelred himself had sent another message with this man,” Flæd returned, still trying not to retch, “not to Lunden—somewhere else.”

  “There is something here….” Dunstan was saying as he reached gingerly beneath the man’s leather breastplate. He drew out a roll of parchment, the edge of which was crusted with old blood. Together he and Flæd spread it out on the ground.

  To Alfred, Lord of the West Saxons and King of the English People, Ethelred, Chief Aldorman of Mercia, sends greetings and warning A raiding party has struck our camp. Lady Æthelflæd must not travel before the attackers are discovered and destroyed. We will look west for their source after we bring our wounded to Lunden. I write in haste.

  The scribbled words ended in a clumsy dribble of wax which showed the imprint of Ethelred’s seal. Flæd covered her face with a hand to ward off the horrid scent of decay, and to control the alarm rising quickly in her. These words written by Ethelred had lain here in Cenwulf’s bosom, lost and unread, every letter of the message as dead as the messenger himself. She and her men should not have come—Ethelred had tried to stop them.

  “Let’s go back to the others.” She rose and turned back to stare along the way that they had come. Their situation was even worse now, she realized. No party from Lunden would be riding to their aid. Ethelred had said he would look to the west for invaders, as the council with Alfred had taught him to do. And thinking his message had halted their party, he would believe the king’s daughter to be safe in Wessex, not wandering in Mercia. If only her men had agreed to send a messenger ahead to Ethelred instead of back to Alfred, Flæd agonized. If only she had marshalled their respect sooner.

  Flæd and her retainer had begun to plod up the bank when they heard the first shouts coming from the site of Ethelred’s camp. Then a scream cut the air. Flæd started to run, but Dunstan’s strides were longer, and he beat her to the horse. He clambered into the saddle, pulling Flæd up behind him.

  Her men were reining the horses frantically at the edge of the meadow, shouting for Dunstan and Flæd as the two of them crashed into the open. A horse ran riderless across the clearing, and two bodies slumped in the grass, bristling with arrows.

  “Raiders!” shrieked the wagon driver as he saw Flæd and Dunstan charge up. Apple, Oat, and the other two horses in harness leaped forward as he gave them their heads, and with the five other mounts left to them, the surviving members of the West Saxon party streamed up into the hills.

  23

  Hunter and Hunted

  WITH A DEADLY RAIN OF ARROWS THE RAIDERS WERE DRIVING them north, away from the river—somehow Flæd noticed this as she clung to Dunstan’s belt and shoulder with straining fingers. Their attackers never seemed far away, although the momentary flash of a pale face and the movement of dark-clad forms was all Flæd could glimpse when she tried to look back.

  “We can ride ahead, Lady!” Dunstan cried out over his shoulder. “My horse is faster than the wagon and the others!” Should the two of them speed on without her men? There had been something unaccountable about what had just happened in the meadow. Why had the raiders killed only two of her thanes while the entire company waited at their mercy, calling for her?

  “No, stay back!” she screamed. The raiders had wanted her, she thought she understood. They had harassed and mangled her company to bring her running back to them. Now that she had appeared, her thanes would be killed without remorse—they had outlived their usefulness. The only way to save her men would be to help them outrun the enemy.

  “Faster!” she yelled to her riders, whose speed had begun to slacken. We are too slow, Flæd despaired. But it appeared that somehow their lumbering progress was enough. The wagon creaked incessantly over the rough course they had chosen—every person or animal within half a mile must know exactly where they were. Still, there came no attack.

  “Let me ride in the wagon,” she gasped in Dunstan’s ear, and the company slowed enough for her to slip off of Dunstan’s horse and into the grasp of a thane riding in the wagon bed. They would have to turn south again if they were to reach Lunden, the only defended city any of them knew in this place.

  “Can we get back to the river?” She gestured around the tense body of the driver, who threw a look over his shoulder at the wooded country they would have to cross again, and then sent his team toward a gap in the trees. The West Saxon riders swept around with them, and everyone began to pick up speed with the downhill journey.

  “Ahh!” A retainer riding next to the wagon cried out in pain. Flæd’s driver leaned back in consternation, sawing at the reins and almost bringing his horses to a stop before he sent them lunging back up the hill. The rider who had cried out reeled precariously in his saddle. He clung with one arm to his horse’s neck as it turned with the others to race back onto higher ground. From his other shoulder protruded the pale shaft of an arrow. The raiders had caught up.

  As the sun struggled across into the sky amid gathering clouds, Flæd and her men pressed north, and once again they seemed to outpace their pursuers. Every one of Flæd’s bones seemed to ache from the constant jarring of the wagon ride. Her retainers had dragged the wounded thane into the wagon when he could no longer keep his seat on his own horse, and Flæd knew he would have to have a quiet resting place very soon, and hot water and herbs to clean and pack the wound. They should have seen some other settlement by now, she felt sure, some sign of human habitation along the twisting detour the raiders were forcing them to take. But if the raiders knew this countryside well, they might be able to steer the West Saxons away from any such dwelling places. Flæd began to think this was exactly what they had done.

  She tried to ease her injured thane as the wagon bumped through another rough clearing. They were climbing again at a pitiful speed, and Flæd wondered how much longer the drooping horses would be able to drag their feet forward. At the end of their strength her company would have to make a final stand against the invisible attackers coming up behind them.

  Was there nothing else the West Saxon party could do? Flæd stared at the countryside around them, trying to guess where her group might be headed. They had been driven north from the river. Before that they had travelled more than half of the distance south and east toward Lunden. Flæd closed her eyes, trying to picture the maps she had seen in her father’s council room. Hadn’t they spoken of Mercian defenses in this area? Of some difficulty with repairs? If her memory was correct, her men might not be far from a Mercian outpost loyal to Et
helred and Alfred.

  She looked ahead of them. They had been skirting little rolling hills, and now one caught her eye—a mound in the distance, not quite on the course they had been forced to take. There was something unnatural about its contours. The hill leveled off near its crest, and then another tier, smaller than the first, completed the rise. This mound was bare and even on top, almost as if some giant being had cut and shaped it, like a child molding soft earth.

  Flæd’s eyes widened. Her mind suddenly filled with memories of her lessons from the great Chronicle, and of her talks with Red and Father John about the strategies of the Danish wars. A kind of ancient fortress—“The earth from the encircling trench would he piled in the center until it made a hill which appeared flat at the summit…in times of war folk could bring their families and their beasts inside for safety. I believe your father has found and occupied several of these places, and is strengthening them for his own army’s defense.” It was possible that this strange hill was an old earthwork defense, perhaps even one which her father had repaired. Her party might have a chance if they could reach it before they had to turn at bay.

  “Driver.” She pointed. “Turn toward that bare hill, if you can.

  “What?” shouted one of the retainers in the wagon with her. “Do we take the advice of a girl when all our lives may be lost? Dunstan!”

  “Lady?” Dunstan brought his horse up beside the wagon.

  “I think I see a fortress, there,” she said tensely, pointing again. “There might even be a garrison of men loyal to King Alfred—they could help us!” Squinting into the lowering mist, Dunstan saw the hill she meant. Without a word he sent his mount toward it, and the driver brought his team in line with the mound. The other riders altered course with the wagon as the first drops of rain began to fall.