Chapter Six
Directions Home
Carrying a king’s ransom on your own, through the countryside between settlements - indeed, making a point of avoiding those settlements - isn’t the safest way of making progress.
If the outlaws, vagabonds and merely desperate that inhabited the woods and wild places had any idea of what was on my packhorse they might even have banded together to relieve me of the burden. Every man who fancied trying his chances from miles around would have been lining up to have a go, whether ganged up or on their own. Even without word having spread, there were risks. Those who follow the roads less travelled usually have a reason for doing so and it is often not a good one. Maybe mine wasn’t particularly virtuous, either. I was transporting Frankish gold (and silver, and jewellery), taken from a Frankish king, without anything like his wholehearted agreement, through Frankish kingdoms ruled by his Frankish relatives. To put the icing on the cake: I had no idea where I was going, other than north. It would have been far more sensible to head south to Spain…
Sage skipped skittishly beneath me at the very thought, and Onion whinnied. They may not know where we were going but they knew fine well where we were not. I patted my mount and reassured the two of them that we were not going to change course.
Picking our way carefully through the woods, I became aware that we had company. Three of them - again. Why was it always three? Two had concealed themselves in bushes up ahead and one was working his way round to come up behind me. I slowed the horses down to a walk and then stopped completely, patting my mount’s neck in order to give an impression of concern. From the saddle, I looked carefully at each of the gelding’s four legs and then slipped out of the saddle. I feigned an examination of the animal’s left front leg, running my hands up and down as if feeling for any damage. As it happened, there was some heat; a ligament had maybe been asked to do a bit much. I would attend to it later. For the moment, my thoughts were with our would-be highwaymen, or whatever they were.
There are many reasons why men - and some women - resort to thievery and murder. Desperation was the most common. The wretched, the starving, the farmer whose crops have failed. The tenant who has lost everything when the local lord decided that he wanted his land and house. The villagers who had their houses burned down round their ears by some raiding-party or another - or even just the lord’s guards and warriors out for what they thought of as fun, after a night’s drinking. I had sympathy for all of those and would treat them as gently as I could, if they tried their luck with me. But this trio did not come under any of those headings. Slight probing of their minds - not enough to even give their heads an itch - made clear that these were career criminals. They had several deaths on their hands, mostly of poorly-defended or even totally undefended targets. The recollection of the slaughter of a young family made me particularly revolted. And worse: they enjoyed it. They got a kick out of the deaths they inflicted. They had tortured for fun. They were not going to see the gentle side of Prince Ciaran the Damned.
Meanwhile, I could feel that they were confused by what I had done; this wasn’t part of their plan. Then again, walking into an ambush in a narrow track between thick undergrowth wasn’t part of mine.
The one behind us, being cut off from his fellows to the fore, was even more confused and uncertain. And he had no-one to share his uncertainty with. It was only a matter of time before he abandoned their plan and tried to move things forward. His arrogance was easy to detect. A stranger, on his own, away from the main track. Lightly armed, three against one - what could go wrong? He would find out soon enough.
He slipped out from behind a rock and sauntered up the track towards me, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He was confident that his comrades would pick up on his change of plan and come out to join him and that I would be easily overcome. He had a medium-sized knife - not quite a sword but pretty close - in a sheath mounted diagonally in the small of his back, placed for quick release.
The only quick release he would get would be death.
“Hail, my friend. Has your horse gone lame?” I stood up and turned towards him, smiling in my turn.
“Yes, it would appear so. It looks like he has strained a sinew,” I said. I turned away from him, giving the impression that I was going to attend to the leg again. I could see that he was reaching back for his knife. Instead of bending down to attend to my horse’s fetlock, I pulled out my Big Blade from its scabbard on the horse and swung round, in a single movement. He just had time to register surprise before his head was parted from his shoulders and flew over Sage’s rump, to land with a damp thud a few yards away. His decapitated body continued walking for a couple of steps and then collapsed.
The other two had emerged from their hiding-places in the bushes and were momentarily dumbfounded. But only for a moment. They may have been thoroughly nasty, evil and sadistic murderers, but they weren’t cowards - and they still had me outnumbered. Their swords were already drawn and they started to run across the gap between us. Instead of trying to get away, which is what they clearly expected, I ran towards them. I ran clear of the horses and gave myself plenty of room to swing the Big Blade. It was as long as my own body; when it was stood on its tip, it reached to just below my shoulders. Anyone - or any animal - within six feet was in great danger. My particular Big Blade was a bit unusual; it was forged and honed to cut, not just to crush bone. It was seriously sharp, as the leftward of my two opponents discovered, very quickly. He raised his sword-arm but before he could complete his downward stroke, his forearm had been severed below the elbow. Its momentum carried it spiralling through the air for a few feet before it hit the ground and tumbled along a little further. Its owner didn’t realise what had happened for a moment. He looked at what was left of his arm in disbelief, unable at first to comprehend why it was spouting blood and wondering where his sword - which should have been embedded in my neck - had gone. When realisation dawned, he looked at it in horror. His mouth opened and he started to scream. Like a wild animal whose leg has been caught in a trap - the feeling was probably very much the same. Although the remains of his arm were still bleeding profusely, the heavy veins and arteries were in the process of snapping back up inside his flesh and sealing themselves off. He wouldn’t bleed to death from that particular injury. I would finish him off later. For the moment, I touched him briefly and sent him into his own particular madness. His eyes swept from side to side; his head swung this way and that, and he swung what was left of his sword-arm, as well as the other, fighting enemies only he could see. But I could imagine; the faces of the dead, of those he had killed, had risen from the grave and were back to take their revenge.
All this, I took in at a glance. The surviving brigand looked at his two companions, and then at me. He took a couple of steps forwards but then he thought better of it. Even when the odds had been in his favour, his threesome had not been able to prevail. The odds were now definitely no longer in his favour; it was one against one. He backed off a bit, then turned and took to his heels. Nine times out of ten I would have let him go. But I knew how deeply evil this particular gang was. He would view this episode as nothing more than a setback. In a short while, he would have seduced others onto his dark path and he would resume his murderous, malicious and manifestly evil career. I took my lighter knife and prepared to throw it; this one deserved to die.
Don’t presume to give yourself that power of judgement, Prince Ciaran.
I hesitated, just for a moment. It was as if the Irish monk - Dougald - had been standing right by me, reminding me that Such a thing is way beyond our estate. A very kind and compassionate fellow. He had no idea what this monster in human skin had been up to.
I threw the knife, hard. I had judged true; it caught him in his retreating back, pretty much in the middle, between his shoulder blades. It didn’t kill him outright but it brought him to his knees, with a grunt of pain and a sigh. He was leaning on his hands as I got up to him. His sword lay in front
of him; it could not save him now.
“Who are you?” he asked, through teeth gritted in pain.
“I am called Prince Ciaran the Damned,” I replied.
“Oh, sweet Jesus. Just my luck. To meet. A demon in human form,” he gasped. “See you in Hell, then.”
“Until then,” I said, and swung my Big Blade. He met a more merciful end than he had given many others, as his head fell cleanly off his shoulders. His body wavered a moment as his arms, still with strength in them, held it up. A torrent of blood from the stump of his neck slowed quickly to a trickle. Then the body collapsed, quite graciously, tried to roll once and fell back to lie still. If it had had a face, it would have been in the dirt. His clothes were mud stained but good enough to wipe the worst of his blood from my knife, which I retrieved from his back. I cleaned my Big Blade on the first assailant, who lay where I had left him, the horses were unconcerned; they had seen worse. They continued munching the grass they had tugged up. A whimper and a strangled yelp reminded me of the third. Dammit. After I had pretty much cleaned up, as well. I found him cowering behind a rock - but there was no hiding from the terror unleashed inside his own mind. He must have been aware of my presence; he curled more tightly into a foetal ball as I reached down to haul him out. Whatever he saw, though, it wasn’t me. He was crying and gurgling in wordless, mindless, petrifying fear. He didn’t resist being pulled clear - just batted away ineffectually with his stump of a sword-arm and a progressively weakening shield arm. It proved impossible to get him to sit up to allow a clean swing at his neck so in the end I gave up, and simply slit his throat. Blood surged enthusiastically from a severed artery, then reduced - quite quickly - to a pumping flow, then an ooze. In a few seconds, he keeled over and was dead. Had he been able to make any sense of it I think he would have been relieved.
It took a few minutes longer to clean my sword and knife and to rifle through the corpses’ clothes to see if they had anything worth taking. They didn’t. Was it worth searching for their hideout? Where they would have stored their ill-gotten treasures? I stood up, leaned back and then stretched my arms, easing the tension of the last few minutes. No, not really; a search would have been a waste of time. I already had more in my packs than I would ever need. Their weapons were nowhere near as good as mine, except for the long knife belonging to the first of the three. That could come in handy. Everything else I simply chucked in a loose pile. I didn’t bother with a burial; the woodland creatures would deal with the remains, soon enough. They had as much right to life as anyone, and the possibility of a free lunch was already attracting attention. I could feel a wolf becoming interested in the smell of death, from downwind. I would be well advised to leave. No point in waiting for trouble to arrive; there would be plenty waiting for me wherever I ended up.
That reminded me of the train of thought I had been following before the unholy trinity had interrupted it. I remounted Sage and tugged him away from the grassy bank, and the packhorse too. Where was I going? What did the gods have in mind for me? It was daft to wander through hostile lands without a clear destination in view. It had been nearly a week since Saint’s Cape or whatever the town was called. I was more than a hundred and fifty miles from Clovis’ camp, and his court. There had been no sign of pursuit or even rumours of any kind of search. The opportunity was there; it was high time I forced the issue and found out what I was supposed to be doing. A hot meal was well overdue, too. I put some distance between myself and the three dead bodies, searched for and located a clearing in the woods and then set about preparing the first decent fire I had seen for days. A nearby river had formed itself into a pool - with the help of a beaver family - and, after tending to the horses, collecting wood for the fire and working up a healthy sweat, I was able to have a wash, also. Not before time; given a while, the wolves may well have picked up my own rather ripe scent, in addition to the dead robbers’. I had got into the habit of cleanliness in Spain - reluctantly, at first, but I came to embrace it with enthusiasm. It was good to feel clean again.
I built a fire and prepared a stew in a pot that I raised on stones a few inches above its normal height, so that the food would not burn if I was Away for a long time. Once it was established in its cooking I settled myself to rest comfortably against a large rock, using my tent as padding. The evening was warm; I wouldn’t freeze if I was insensible for a few hours.
Fires were always mesmerising. The play of the flames offered an endless, kaleidoscopic variety of shapes, dancing to a tune that I couldn’t hear, even in my deepest trances. As the flames themselves died down and the heat rose, the distortions in the air weaved a different pattern. I could watch it forever but there was something else that caught my attention - a point of light that became a multicoloured ray, then a jagged-edged fissure and
You fool, you have killed us all.
I could hear the crashing waves and taste the salt spray. The wind was picking up and driving us straight to it.
The child emerged from the woods just up from the seashore. It looked concerned. It pointed upwards, into the sky. I did as I was told and flew over the land, to be blown wherever I was fated to go. It was Britain. Well away from the south coast, to the hills that ran down the country’s spine. A word was forming on the ground, becoming clearer as I rushed north. Elmet.
Blood had sprung up from somewhere and was flowing down the lands, covering it in a crimson tide. I was surrounded by corpses. Children, thousands of them. Each with empty, bloody pits where their eyes should be. The corpses surrounded me, mounting higher into the sky.
Then I was clear. A handful of men were standing around a table, a map laid out before them. Armies were represented in their relative dispositions and strengths. The one with the reddish beard looked straight at me
“The English are coming…we need you. You must help us”
I retreated and was back in the woods. The child was waiting for me. He smiled and peeked from behind a ball of wool. He threw it into the woods, in the wrong direction from the way I wanted to go. The way I had to go. He smiled and shook his head. He pointed to the woods here the ball of wool was still visible, still glowing.
Later, he said. After. You will know.
A man was sat by a campfire. The food smelled good and I wanted it. He looked straight at me and said something I did not understand. He raised his hand to his mouth, miming the act of eating. Come on and eat, he said. The men were looking for me they hurt me I had to hide…
I came to with a start and reached immediately for my brown jug and its soothing, magical contents. The searing headache that always accompanies the Sight was just kicking in as I opened the bottle and took a draft of the reviving preparation. My old friend Ieuan, who I had met at Innisgarbh when were both undergoing the Druids’ brutal training, had shown me how to make it - and it had never let me down. Ieuan. He must be a fully qualified Druid by now - probably for a decade or more. It had been twenty years since we last saw each other. I took another draft and smiled. What had brought him back to mind? I had barely thought of him for years, while I had been wandering across the tangled, war-torn lands of Britain and Europe. In place of the unity and order of the Roman Empire, Europe was divided into interlocking petty kingdoms, seemingly perpetually engaged in internecine warfare. Britain was much the same. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fought amongst themselves at least as hard as they fought the remaining British, who had been driven to the west of the island.
The English are coming…
So, the British kingdom of Elmet needs help against the encroaching English, and it seems that the gods were determined that I should give it. But that was old news. Elmet had ceased to exist as an independent kingdom twenty years before. It was now part of the English kingdom of Mercia and little more than name, a legend of the past. Sure, its residents still called themselves ‘People of Elmet’ or something like it, but who or what a non-existent kingdom might be fighting against was anyone’s guess and what set this particular skirmish or argu
ment apart from all the others would presumably be revealed, in good time.
It had been a while since I was last in Britain. I tended to be cautious about visiting it; I could not predict when I would encounter someone who had heard of the price on my head and was willing to chance their arm. The English didn’t really care about any arguments between the Irish clans - or within them; they were of no interest to Deira, Bernicia, Mercia, the Anglians of the east or the Saxons of the south. They were busy enough with their own disputes. So I was as safe in their kingdoms as any other foreigner but I was cautious nonetheless. A different name would probably be a good idea. Something against seasickness while aboard ship across the Narrow Sea would be a good idea as well.
Talking of seasickness, grumbling from my stomach conveyed an urgent query as to whether my throat had been cut. I didn’t eat before Visions, if I could avoid it - whatever I had consumed tended to be vomited back up. And now I was hungry. I hadn’t been Away for long; the fire still had heat in it and the stew was gently plopping. Each bubble, as it burst, emitted a smell that was becoming irresistible. The horses had their grass and seemed happy enough. Their tethers would restrict their wanderings so that they couldn’t eat everything in sight and beyond. My stew tasted as good as it smelled and all seemed pretty right for everyone. This side of the Narrow Sea, anyway. Or this bit of it, up away from the main traffic and the tumult of the towns.
Lockeran (Prince Ciaran the Damned Book 2) Page 5