by David Drake
Mael and Starkad were on foot, fully armed but not actively threatening. Both wore their shields slung behind their backs. Mael's sword was sheathed and Starkad rested his axe helve in the palm of his hand. The bearded head was hooked over the Dane's shoulder. The rectangular peen of it facing forward was no reassurance to Lancelot who had seen it crush the stone from his hands, but it was as innocent a fashion as any in which the big weapon could be carried.
When they were twenty feet away, Lancelot dropped his point at the men on foot and called, "That's far enough."
Neither Mael nor Starkad appeared concerned by the implied threat. Starkad even took another half step before halting. Unlike his guards, Arthur, too, appeared to be relaxed. He rested part of his weight on his hands crossed on his right front saddle horn. "Leader," Starkad thundered at the king, "I claim the right to be freed from my oath to you so I may end a blood feud. That feud I swore long ago, so I must follow it now and leave you."
The berserker spoke clumsy Celtic, his inflections Danish and his idiom, such as it was, more Irish than British. Arthur frowned. Beside him the cornicine started to giggle. As if he had been ordered to explain, Starkad continued, "Kari, Tostig's daughter, married in her first youth the bonder Ulf Svertlief's son of Tollund and then, at his death, Asgrim Walleye, second son of—"
"Blood of God, Dane!" Arthur burst out. "If you've got to tell your story, tell it short or get your butt back to where it belongs. You're supposed to be training this afternoon, aren't you?"
Starkad blinked. He pursed his lips in concentration, then said, "Of this marriage—" he raised his voice as the troops of horsemen reined up noisily behind Arthur, awaiting further command—"was born Asa, niece to me through Tostig's line, who married the Saxon thegn Biargram—"
Arthur flushed and swung toward his Master of Soldiers, a furious command ready in his open mouth. Mael forestalled him, stepping forward with a hand laid on the Dane's shoulder to silence him. "Lord," he called in Latin. "Let me cut his tale down."
Arthur calmed slightly and turned. "Quickly then," he said.
Mael licked his lips. "My friend's niece wed a thegn named Biargram," he said, "a Saxon. He sent her home after a year but kept the dowry. The girl's family couldn't get it back since none of them wanted to take on Biargram. Starkad, here, had already been outlawed so there wasn't anything he could do, but he swore he'd kill Biargram if the two of them ever walked a land with no seas or mountains between them.
"And in mBeal Liathain last week, a Saxon sailor told me Biargram had brought his tribe here to Britain."
"That's right," said Arthur. As though his mind was riffling through a packet of military communiques, he continued, "He and his household, all told some two hundred, crossed over several years ago in four keels. They joined Cerdic—the traitor!" The king's face went momentarily bestial as he hissed the last words. Calmly he continued, "At last report they'd been settled near Clausentum and were doing quite well. But what is that to me?"
Mael was an educated man with an educated man's trick of assuming someone less well educated was also less intelligent. The Irishman kept his face smooth, but a clear sight of Arthur's mind at work frightened him in a way the flashes of bloodthirsty madness had not. "Lord," he said, "my friend is headstrong and worse, you know that. Once he gets a notion, you can't drag it away from him with a team of oxen. He's convinced now that he has to go track this Biargram down. We're brothers in a real way, he and I; we've mixed more blood on battlefields than ever womb-mates had in common. I have to go with him."
At the word "have," Arthur's eyes narrowed and a venomous smile spread across Lancelot's face. "Oh, aye," Mael snapped, the Celtic phrasing seeping through with emotion, "you can kill us, can you not? A pleasant time you'll have to do it, aye, but you can. And what will it gain you, to kill two men and save your enemies the labor of it?"
Arthur began to laugh. "And so I should send men on leave into the middle of the Saxons, because somebody diddled somebody's niece out of her dower share? No, I don't think I'll begin running my army that way, not just yet. Get back to your duties."
Behind Arthur, the cornicine added, "Sure, they're likely spies for Cerdic, Leader."
Unexpectedly, Lancelot reached over and laid his fingertips on the back of Arthur's hand. "No, Leader," he said. "Let them go."
Arthur looked at him dubiously. Lancelot continued, "They've asked your leave to go; your authority suffers nothing to grant the request, and your camp discipline, I understand—" he cocked a grim eye at Mael; the Gaul's speech was still slurred by thick lips and a swollen nose—"will improve. Let them go."
"And if they are returning spies?" the king asked, but as a genuine question.
"They'll leave the woman," Lancelot pointed out—that had been no intent of Mael's, but he dared not deny it—"and besides, if they are traitors, it's best we be shut of them."
"Leader," Mael put in, "I brought you—" he realized that Arthur might not want the skull and its purpose released to a hundred men, even his own men—"what you know of. I know you realize . . . how risky that job was. It was harder, perhaps, than even you fully understand. But I brought the thing back where scarcely another could have done; and if you give us leave now, I swear by whatever you wish that I'll come back myself and with my friend here, if there's life in either of us."
"Blood feud," Arthur repeated. He laughed again, loudly and without humor. "I have a blood feud, too . . . with the whole world, I sometimes think. It'll bow its neck to me some day, yes. . . . Go on, take this Saxon's head or leave your own, it's all the same to me. But if you enter the hall of Cerdic your master, tell him what you have seen here—and in the cave. And tell him that one day I will be coming to serve him in the fashion that traitors are served. It would be well for him if he had fallen on his sword before that day."
Mael dipped his head in acquiescence. Starkad, following the motion as he could not the words, nodded also. The two men turned and began walking back the way they had come, the Dane's axe-edge winking as it split sunbeams.
"Leader," they heard Lancelot say when he thought it was safe to speak to his king, "I'll ride back with them, arrange an escort to the Zone for them—and a guard for the woman."
Arthur nodded grimly. His mind was fixed on his memory of Cerdic, the British lordling who had weighed the danger of Saxon mercenaries against Arthur's growing tyranny—and had called in Saxons. The king's right hand twisted on the saddle horn as if it were a sword hilt, the knuckles as white as the skin across his cheekbones. Lancelot clucked to his horse and trotted toward the men on foot before they disappeared around a curve in the trail. Behind him, Arthur was giving orders in a normal voice to the exercising troops.
Mael and Starkad waited around the bend for the Master of Soldiers. The overt changes in their stances were slight but significant. Mael had thrust his left arm through his shield straps. Starkad's axe, though still on his shoulder, faced forward and was ready to strike. Both men were tense, certain that Lancelot would not have come alone to slay them, but knowing also how much the Gaul hated them both.
"Gently, heroes," Lancelot said. His grin had split a scab on his damaged face. A tiny runnel of blood streaked his chin. "I'm going back to make everything easy for you, to see that you're issued food and don't have any trouble with our own patrols."
"Why?" the Dane demanded bluntly.
"Oh, not because I like you," the big Gaul chuckled. "I've spent every day since—this—" he touched his swollen nose—"thinking about how I was going to kill you both. And it wasn't that easy, you know, because frankly, a duel didn't seem very practical. And though I certainly could have found a group of men to do what was needed, that would have been expensive in one way or another. Then there was always the uncertainty of how the Leader would react . . . ." Lancelot's voice dropped unintentionally as he thought about his king. "He's . . . one can't be sure with him, you know. No one can."
Lancelot cleared his throat, regaining his normal inso
uciance. The three men were walking down the trail, horseman in the center, like closest friends. "And of course I thought of poison," Lancelot continued, "but there was the problem of getting you both at the same time, and from what I hear of this woman you've brought back, Irishman, maybe poison wouldn't be a good bet so long as she's around.
"But you come and say that you want to walk into Cerdic's kingdom and chop off the head of one of his Saxon barons. That's fine, yes; I'll help you get started any way I can. I never quarrel with the will of God, Irishman."
Lancelot's mighty laughter boomed around them as they trudged toward the villa.
* * *
The captain of the Cirencester Patrol was a Frank named Theudas, no more of a natural horseman than Starkad himself was. He dismounted with Mael and the Dane at the furthest point of his patrol area, twelve miles southeast of the walled town that was the pivot of Arthur's domain. The score of men in the patrol began nibbling bits of sausage and cheese in the drizzle, talking in low voices and hugging their cloaks tighter to their mail shirts.
"You're welcome to keep the horses, you know," Theudas said. "The warrant you brought from Lancelot says to aid you in any way short of sending men into the Zone."
The two friends continued to unlash their gear from their mounts. "That bastard Lancelot probably hoped this beast's spine'd open me up to the shoulders from beneath," Starkad grumbled. He arched his back, massaging his buttocks with both hands. "Don't know that I'm sure that it hasn't already. No, I thank you, but I'd just as soon walk some."
Both Mael and Starkad wore their body armor, though their steel caps were lashed to their packs. On their heads were droop-brimmed hats of leather, protection against the traveler's twin foes: the sun that might come out to bake them and the rain that now collected in jeweled ropes sliding from the leather. The packs themselves were thin rolls of oiled canvas containing a week's rations and nothing else. Grunting, the men slung their shields and then the packs over them. They carried spears in place of walking staves. Each spear had an oak shaft as tall as a man and as thick as a woman's forearm. Mael's sword and dagger were sheathed while Starkad's axe was slung under his right arm in its carrying loops, the head nodding free against the iron ringlets of his mail coat.
"Hell of a poor day to go off," Theudas said somberly.
"Not exactly a bloody social event," grunted Starkad in reply. To his companion he added, "Ready?"
"Half a sec." Mael shifted his target so that its lower edge no longer rubbed his hipbone. On an eighty-mile hike, the constant friction would raise a blister the size of a drinking cup, even through the iron mail.
"Don't know why the Leader wants to send spies into Venta anyhow," the Frank continued. "God knows, the Saxons aren't like us, running an army together on thirty minutes' notice. When they mount something it takes weeks, and Cerdic isn't planning anything of the sort. We know that, here with the Patrol. There's always somebody slipping into Glevum or Corinium to see a relative—or run away from their master, or maybe just to make a little by trading the part of their crop they hid from the thegn who owns the lands they farm. Sure, Saxons, too. We don't care, and Cerdic, he doesn't have the men to stop it, the cavalry. If he put his lumbering infantry out in little vedettes, the Leader'd ring the whole Southern Squadron out. We'd eat the Saxon patrols alive before they could do jack shit. Naw, this sector's quiet. It's Aelle who's about to raise hell in the North."
"Okay," said Mael. "Let's go, Starkad."
"There's going to be fighting, then?" the Dane asked. He wasn't looking at Mael, but he held a hand toward the Irishman to indicate he had heard the request.
"Sure is," agreed Theudas. "Aelle—he calls himself king, has most a' the Saxons north of Londinum—he's raised his levies and must be ready to march by now. On Lindum, likely; he's got big eyes. Tried to get Cerdic and the rest to send some housecarls for the work. The good thing about the Saxons is they don't like each other a bit more than they do us." The Frank scowled. "Or than the North British bastards of the Reged like us, come to think."
"Mael," asked Starkad with a worried look on his face, "do you suppose we're going to miss the fighting?"
"We're going to root here in this goddamn place if we stand around talking much longer," the Irishman snapped.
"Umm," said Starkad. He waved to the Frank and said, "Well, we'll be seeing you again soon, you bet." Mael had already stumped off along the road. Grunting a little with effort, the Dane lengthened his own stride to catch up. The patrol of Companions vanished into the mist behind them, though the clink of their equipment sounded long after the horsemen were out of sight.
Mael's sandals clinked also. The drizzle irritated him. He knew he was in a bad mood, knew also that it was worse than foolish to let his friend's relative good humor irritate him still further. Mael kept his mouth shut and let an occasional remark by Starkad and the dull ringing of hobnails stand as the only sounds between him and the Dane for over a mile.
Finally Starkad said, "Hard damn road, isn't it?" The Irishman grunted. This time Starkad pursued the matter. "I mean, I think if I'd had to walk on this before, I'd have taken that Frank up on his offer of horses, huh?'"
Mael's anger swelled. Then the ridiculousness of it struck him. He began to laugh. "Hey," he said, "the least Lugh could have done for us is to give us decent weather to get killed in, don't you think?"
"Huh?"
"Look," Mael explained, relaxing and feeling as if chains had dropped away, "you know damn well what our chances of getting out of this in one piece are. Don't you?"
"Well," Starkad temporized, "we've gotten into some pretty tight places before, too. You always find ways out of them." He patted his axe. "You and this, hey?"
The Irishman snorted. "Sure, and that guarantees that any fool thing we get into is going to be fine, sure. And this August it's going to rain pieces of gold for my birthday. Well, right now I think I'm going to know you maybe three days longer, if we're lucky. I don't guess I want to spend that time pissed at you because I don't like the weather. Forgive me?"
Starkad cleared his throat. "Oh," he said, "that's okay. I don't much like the rain, either. And I sure wish we had something to ride on, now."
"Such chance as we've got," Mael explained, "pretty much makes us walk. On horses we'd get a lot of attention. The British were horsemen long before Arthur mounted his whole army, but on the eastern side of the Zone a horse marks you. I want us to blend in with the—human countryside."
Starkad looked doubtful. "I might pass for Saxon," he said. "Wotan's eye, I've got a cousin who wed one, though they both drowned. He was no kin to Biargram, either. But I don't see you, brother, looking anything but a black-hearted, crop-haired Irishman to anybody with eyes to see."
"Sure, but that's all right—now," Mael said. "You know what happened when Hengst first made his play against the Vortigern?"
Starkad nodded. "They cut and burned everything British around that didn't have walls, until the British got organized."
"Right. And what happened then?"
"They got their balls kicked between their ears," Starkad answered. "Got too confident. They found the locals might not like to do their own fighting, but if they had to . . . Horsa had his skull nailed to the gates of Lindum; Hengst himself got shut up on an island in the Thames, eating harness leather and wondering if he was going to make it through the winter. A damned near thing, from the stories I've heard."
"Very near," Mael agreed. "And there wasn't a bit of help coming from the Continent to get them out of the hole, either. People don't pull up stakes to migrate into the middle of a disaster. They stay home and plow their own bit of dirt, even if it's sandy and the weather'd make this wretchedness—" he shook his head and scattered a coil of droplets from the hat brim—"look like balmy summer or, if they've got to move, they go south to Italy or east to try the Greek emperor's pay for a while.
"And the Saxon kings have learned that. Arthur's planning something. Maybe nobody knows just
what or just who's going to be first. But they damned well know what'll happen to them if they wait till their backs're to the wall before they go looking for help. Aelle up north seems to be getting his punch in early, but I'm betting that anybody who can handle a sword can find a bunk in one thegn's house or another's. And I don't guess they'd much care what tongue his mother sang him lullabies in. Wandering housecarls don't ride horses, but looking Irish isn't going to call me to mind, particularly."
The rain was with them all day, and it was their only companion. The War Zone separating Saxon from Briton was a wasteland, proof that if neither side won a war, then both sides lost. Between the two races, across the center of the island, lay a no-man's-land that the British had given up but the Saxons could not hold. In the daytime, both sides might use the irregular ribbon for pasture. Their armed guards stayed nervous and watchful. Despite that, all too often they were unable to protect their herds or themselves against skulking bands of Saxons or a sudden brutal thrust by a troop of Companions.
Evening came late and almost indistinguishably from the wan daylight that preceded it. Although they were well within the territory that Cerdic claimed and taxed, the country to either side of the road was as barren as that of the Zone to the north. Cattle lowed in the near distance, however. Once the smell of wood smoke disclosed a cook fire whose plume was hidden in the mist.
To the left loomed a settlement, Saxon but burned out like the occasional Roman building Mael and Starkad had passed earlier. Mael pointed his thumb at the ruins. "They thought they were safe," he said. "There's no place safe within a half day's hard ride of Arthur's outposts. Straight down the road, torching everything that'll burn and slaughtering everything that's alive. No time for looting or prisoners, but sure, you can teach Saxons that civilized men are just as bloody-handed as the barbarians they despise. Any houses that stand, even this deep in toward Venta, are going to be far enough off the road that raiders won't chance ambush to hunt them out of the woods."