Wolf of Wessex

by Matthew Harffy

  She swallowed the cheese and drank the water. He turned to her as she sat up and his eyes seemed to glow in the dim light of the dawn. For a heartbeat she could not breathe under the force of that cold glare. She rose, mumbling that she needed to relieve herself. He did not move, merely nodding.

  “Hurry,” he said, his voice rasping like a blade drawn along a whetstone.

  No, she had not imagined the savage fire that had consumed Dunston the night before.

  When she returned, she had made up her mind about him. Dunston frightened her, but he had treated her well and she could think of nobody she would rather have at her side as they fled from Hunfrith’s murderous men.

  “How did you do? In the night?” she asked.

  “Well enough,” he replied, heading into the dense forest. She could not be certain, but she believed they were heading away from the path that led towards Tantun.

  “Did you…” she hesitated. “Did you kill any of them?”

  “One more,” he answered without pause, as if slaying a man meant nothing to him. “And I dispersed their horses. It should take them a while to be after us. If we keep off the roads and paths I doubt they will find us.”

  “Did you sleep at all?” she asked.

  “I closed my eyes for a few moments. I will sleep when we reach Exanceaster.”

  She had been right; they were heading south. She felt a flush of pride at keeping her sense of direction despite the rush in the darkness through the trees and foliage.

  “Exanceaster?” she said. “Why should we go there?” She had never been to the place, but knew it to be the seat of power of Defnascire.

  Dunston paused at the foot of a steep rise, peering upward into the dawn dark. The earth beneath the slope was boggy and clogged with sweet gale. A thin mist hung there, like webs of forgotten dreams. Evidently having made up his mind as to the best way to ascend, Dunston set off up the incline, using the slender trunks of birch saplings to pull himself up.

  “Whatever is written on the vellum,” he said, his breath ragged from the exertion of the climb, “it is something worth killing for.” His foot slipped in the leaf mould and he cursed under his breath, catching hold of a sapling and hauling himself up. When he reached the summit, he turned and reached out his hand to her. She gripped it without hesitation and he pulled her slim form up to him easily.

  “What do you mean to do with the message in Exanceaster? Tantun is closer and there would be priests and monks there who could read it.”

  “That is true, but those bastards know that Ithamar was heading to Tantun, and maybe they will believe we mean to carry it in the same direction. Besides, we must see that it gets into the hands of someone not only able to read, but also to see justice done.”

  They pushed on through a more sparsely forested area of sallow and elder. Aedwen welcomed the sense of openness, of air between the widely spaced trunks. To her left, the rising sun shone its rays deep under the leafy forest roof. She turned to the east, revelling in the warmth of the day on her face.

  “You seek the king’s reeve then?” she said.

  “No,” said Dunston. He let out a sigh and shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts. “I seek the king.”

  “The king?” she blurted out, unable to hide her incredulity. “Even if we could get to speak to him, why would he listen to us?” The thought of even seeing the king of Wessex seemed like madness to her. She glanced at Dunston, to see whether he was jesting. Perhaps this was his misguided way of trying to lift her spirits.

  “He wouldn’t listen to you,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “But by God, he’ll listen to me.”

  He picked up his pace and for a moment she looked at him, her head full of questions. She wanted to call after him, to ask him how he could be so sure that the king would grant him an audience. But as she opened her mouth to shout, the thought of the horsemen on their trail came to her. Her voice would carry far in the quiet dawn, cutting through the chorus of birdsong and leading their enemies to them, if they were near. She clamped her mouth shut and ran after Dunston.

  Twenty-Nine

  They made good progress as they trudged southward. Dunston had for a time contemplated setting snares and traps for their pursuers to stumble upon. He could rig traps that would injure them with sharpened stakes and sprung branches whipping forward when triggered by a clumsy footfall. But he quickly dismissed the idea as a waste of effort. To fashion such traps would take time and there was no way of knowing whether the men who followed would encounter them. He had seen nothing that made him believe they knew how to track them through the forest. And, encumbered by their valuable mounts, which would impede their progress through the foliage, he believed they would more than likely head to the main north–south road.

  For a long while, Aedwen had walked beside him in silence. Whenever he glanced at her he saw her face set in a determined mask. Something had changed between them, he knew, but he could do nothing to alter that. He thought of Eawynn and how she had always said he was a better man than others saw.

  “They see the great warrior,” she had said. “I see the true man who hides behind his axe and fearsome face.”

  He smiled to himself at the memory.

  “Fearsome am I?” he’d laughed, grabbing hold of her. She’d squirmed, pliant curves soft under his firm grip.

  Giggling, she had kissed him.

  “I do not see what frightens others,” she’d said. “I only see my lovely bear of a man.”

  As always when he thought of Eawynn, the memory of her stirred and warmed him, but all too soon, the bitterness of her loss returned and he frowned.

  Aedwen had seen in him what others had always seen. The warrior. The killer. The Wolf. He wondered whether the girl would ever believe that there was another side to his nature that only Eawynn had been able to coax from him.

  “Do you think they are close behind us?” Aedwen asked, breaking the silence between them and bringing him back to the present.

  They had walked for a long while. Dunston looked up at the sky that was visible between the limbs of the trees. The clouds had thickened and the warmth that the day had promised with the dawn had fled, replaced with a greying light and the scent of rain.

  “They might be,” he replied, “but I do not believe so. They won’t be able to bring their horses this deep into the woods and they will not wish to leave them.” He paused, listening to the sounds of the forest. There was no indication they were being followed. “No. I think they will have gone on towards Tantun, or at least the road that leads from Exanceaster to Bathum.”

  “If they have not followed us into the forest, how can they think to catch us?” she asked, hope of escape colouring her tone.

  “They might send men along the road in both directions, hoping to hear news of our passing or to spy us when we leave the woodland.” He set off once again, wincing at the constant ache in his knee. It hurt more when he was still, but all the same, he longed to sit and stretch out before a fire. Not much chance of that any time soon. Aedwen trotted along beside him, her youthful energy bringing the hint of a wistful smirk to his lips. By God, he missed being young.

  “Won’t they head towards Tantun?” she asked.

  “They may well do that. But I think that they will soon fathom out that we have gone south and there is only one reasonable destination for us in this direction. After all, they must know we either have the message or know of it, so we need to take it somewhere. Knowledge is useless if it is not shared.”

  “And so we just plan to walk to Exanceaster and pray for the best?”

  He shrugged.

  “I would rather trust to our wits than rely on God to see us safe. We should head south of the town until we reach the River Exe. Then we can follow the river back to the walls of Exanceaster. In that way, with a bit of luck, we can avoid any prying eyes on the road.”

  They walked on for a time, following the course of a small river until it widened into a broad expanse of wat
er. Aedwen held her oaken staff as if she had been born with it in her hand and Dunston smiled as he watched her halt for a moment to casually inspect the tracks of an animal in the mud beside the lake. Days ago she would not have noticed the small marks. She turned to him, eyes bright and inquisitive.

  “What are these tracks?”

  “Look about you,” he answered. “What animal do you think might have made them?”

  She gazed around her, forgetting about the men pursuing them, focusing solely on the matter at hand. Dunston lowered himself down, leaning his back against the trunk of a sallow. He turned his head this way and that, grunting as his neck popped. They needed to rest for a while and this place was as good as any. He pulled the ham and cheese from his bag, cutting off a slice and watching Aedwen as she thought.

  She knelt on the earth and inspected the tracks carefully and methodically, before looking back at him.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. It looks as though a creature has dragged something behind it through the mud.”

  He grinned and took a drink from his leather flask.

  “And so it has.”

  “But what?” she asked, confused.

  “Animals do not only leave their prints in the earth,” he said. “Look about you and take the time to really see. Think carefully and you will find the answer.”

  She got up and went close to the pool. A dense tangle of spearwort grew at its edge, the yellow flowers bright against the green of the leaves.

  “Careful not to touch that plant,” he called. “It will cause your skin to blister.”

  Moving warily past the flowering spearwort, Aedwen looked about her.

  A large alder had fallen and its leafy boughs trailed into the still waters. Dunston broke the last of the smoked cheese into two pieces and ate his half. He was enjoying watching the girl discover the truth for herself. She moved to the toppled tree and touched the bright, fresh wood where its trunk had been split. Then she gazed out at the water, at last taking in that which Dunston had seen immediately.

  She turned, pointing to a mound of branches that rose from the water.

  “Is that where it lives?” she asked. Her face glowed with childish excitement.

  “It is,” he said, returning her smile. “So what left the tracks?”

  “It is a beaver,” she said. “The thing it is dragging behind is its tail.”

  When he nodded, she clapped her hands with delight.

  After they had eaten, they continued on, leaving the beaver’s dam and lodge behind them. Aedwen had been pleased with herself and Dunston had revelled in her simple pleasure. But their spirits were soon dampened when the rain that had been threatening to fall all morning finally began to waft down from the sky in a light, yet soaking drizzle. For a time, the tree cover kept them dry, but soon, the water trickled down to drench them. All about them the forest was dank, gloomy and wet. The birds that had filled the morning with song and cheer fell quiet and the only sound was that of the rain, pattering and dripping from leaf and limb. Where there were patches of open ground, the earth squelched underfoot.

  There was still no sign they were being followed, but their conversation of that morning nagged at Dunston. They had followed the course of the river for a time, but now they had left it behind. Dunston pointed to a hill in the distance.

  “Let us take a look at the land about from up there,” he said, wiping the rain from his eyebrows and forehead.

  The hill was bare, save for a stand of yew on its crown. If he judged rightly, the Bathum to Exanceaster road would lie someway off to the west.

  “If we approach the rise from the east and head to the trees,” he said, “we should get a good view of the road and the land to the north. Careful now, let us not be out in the open for too long.”

  It was steeper than it had looked and they both slipped and slid on the wet grass. All the while he worried that they might be seen. He felt exposed and began to question his decision to climb up here. Too late for that now. There was nothing for it but to press on. As they got higher and could see the rain-swept wooded hills of Somersæte rolling away to the north, he was relieved to see no movement.

  Their clothes were sodden by the time they reached the shelter of the trees. After the exposed slopes of the hill, it felt almost warm beneath the branches.

  “We will rest here awhile,” he said, panting from the struggle up the hill.

  They settled down under an old yew, beside the twisted skeletal remnants of a dead juniper bush. Old, brown needles crunched beneath them. They were wonderfully dry and it was good to be out of the rain even if only for a short time.

  Below them, they could make out the unnatural straight line of the road, a shadow like a spear haft plunged through the undulating verdant curves of the forest. They sipped at the water from their flasks and watched, each silent and anxious. As if to speak would somehow give away their presence on the hill.

  Thin trails of mist formed over parts of the woodland, like wisps of lamb’s wool caught on thorns. Dunston drew in a deep breath, finally allowing himself to relax. He was rummaging in his bag, looking for the last of the ham, when Aedwen touched his arm. He followed her pointing finger. Far in the distance, where the road ran between two steep-sided hills, a great flock of birds was flapping into the misty sky, pale against the dark of the rain-slick leaves of the wood. His eyes were not as good as they had once been, but he thought the flock was a mixture of wood pigeons and doves.

  As he watched, he noticed that the air was clearer now, making it easier to pick out details from afar. The rain had stopped and the wet land shone in a sudden blaze of golden afternoon light.

  A croaking cry split the silence of the hill as half a dozen crows flapped into the sky from where they had been roosting on the branches of the yew trees.

  Cursing silently, Dunston peered up and saw that the clouds had parted, sending brilliant sunlight down upon the trees and hills of Wessex. A flash of silver, as bright and flickering as distant lightning, drew his gaze back down to the road. He squinted.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  For a moment, Aedwen did not speak.

  “I’m not sure how many,” she replied at last, “but there are at least two horsemen down there on the road. The sun caught their horses’ harness, I think.”

  Dunston spat.

  “Riding south?”

  “Yes,” Aedwen said without hesitation.

  By Christ’s bones, he should not have brought them up here. He reached for her arm and pulled her back into the shade beneath the trees.

  “Come, we must leave this place.”

  He led her through the copse, and then they proceeded to slip and slide down the southern slope, putting the hill between them and the riders on the road.

  “You think they saw us?” she asked, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

  “I do not know,” he said. But he could not believe anyone could have missed the black-feathered crows that had taken to the wing above their vantage point. He hoped they were more foolish than he thought, but they would not have to be woodsmen to understand that something or someone had disturbed the birds from the trees.

  He glanced at Aedwen and could see from the set of her jaw that she was thinking the same thing. She did not protest when he urged them into a trotting run southward, away from the hill and back under the canopy of the forest.

  Thirty

  They ran into the humid shade of the trees. They were both out of breath, but Dunston did not slow until they were deep within the woods once more, sheltered from the hill and the road by dense thickets of hazel and hawthorns. They pressed on. When Aedwen tried to speak with him, Dunston merely grunted. She wanted to say that it had not been his fault. He could not have known the men would ride into view at that moment, or that the crows would take wing, giving away their position. But after a time she kept quiet. Her words would not change how he felt. He was tense and irritable and cle
arly angry at himself for leading them up to the hilltop.

  And so they walked in silence, and soon her sweat mingled with the damp from the rain as she struggled to keep up with him.

  Such was the pace he set that soon her legs were burning and a blister on her left heel had burst, stabbing her with a jolt of pain at every step. She was on the verge of asking Dunston for a rest when he held up his hand, signalling her to be silent. He dropped into a crouch. She copied him, her aches and pains forgotten momentarily.

  For a long while they remained thus, hunkered down on their haunches. She was about to ask him what was happening, but one glower from his blue eyes and she snapped her mouth shut.

  A moment later, a skinny, dirt-smeared man stepped into the clearing. Aedwen had not heard him approach until the instant before he walked into sight. How Dunston knew he was coming, she had no idea.

  Over his shoulder, the man carried a brace of pigeons and a plump hare. He held a bow in his hand, and a sheaf of white goose feather fletched arrows were thrust into his belt.

  Dunston stepped from their hiding place. The man started, dropping the game to the leaf mould and snatching an arrow from his belt.

  Before he nocked the arrow, Dunston stepped close.

  “You’ll not be needing that,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling like far-off thunder. The man’s eyes were wide and shining in the forest shadows, but Dunston moved back a pace, placing his axe on the ground. “I mean you no harm.”

  For a moment, Aedwen thought the man might run, but then he seemed to relax. Glancing past Dunston, he grinned at her, his teeth bright and surprisingly whole in his weathered and begrimed face.

  Dunston asked him whether he had seen anyone else in the forest.

  “Not since I left home yesterday morn,” the man said, flicking his attention back to Dunston. “Not a soul. The only folk I ever see in these woods are wolf-heads.” He looked at them askance then, and Dunston fixed him with his icy stare.

  “Wolf-heads, you say?”

  “Yes, but not today. Nobody today. Just the animals and me.”