She studied the troop. From the saddle cantles of a few of them sprang war-banners.
Their horses were dancing at the sudden halt, and the pennons hard to focus upon. Ashild squinted across the distance.
“Wessex,” she breathed, in wonder. The device on the banners looked to be golden dragons.
She did not have time to repeat her discovery to Byrgher, for of a sudden one of the newly arrived men was hit by a flung spear. It had come from the edge of the trees nearest the road, but so far away she could see neither the man who had thrown it nor where his victim’s body had toppled. She heard the cry of their war-leader’s command though, as they kicked their horses forward onto the field.
A movement from the trees caught her eyes, and she touched Byrgher’s arm. Asberg was back, alone and on foot, making his way toward the arriving men. Danes who had ended their contest with the men of Four Stones whirled to them as well. Asberg, caught between them, saw the peril he was in.
Byrgher spoke. “I am going to him,” he told Ashild. He reined his horse free of their leafy shelter, and urged it across the field towards Asberg.
She lost sight of both. One of the oncoming horses of Wessex was downed by a spear thrown into the beast’s rump. It screamed, and then tumbled, hoofs thrashing, as the man on its back sailed over its neck and hit the ground. Another horse just behind the first reared in protest, causing the man upon it to fall.
The men from Wessex were leaping from their horses as the Danes, spears and swords ready, rushed at them. To Ashild’s eyes it looked a swarm of hornets, breaking up and stinging, and then reforming and moving off over the field.
She forced her eyes away, back to where she had last seen her brother. Hrald had not emerged from the wood.
“Hrald,” she whispered.
The first sign of trouble the Prince’s troop came upon was a line of saddled horses, some tied to saplings, others wandering free, in the road before them. Eadward and his men had been following a stream north, one bordered by a trackway. They had come upon no settlement, and when they found the broader road determined to take it for the speed so offered. When they saw the horses they stopped at once. Battle cries, not distant, reached their ears. They were of the Danes, no doubt of that.
Eadward gave the command. They placed their helmets on their heads, pulled their shields around to their chests, and made ready their spears. They tightened their ranks and moved forward. Rounding a slight bend in the road they glimpsed the field of action. The trees on the right thinned to an opening, upon which a struggle, still ongoing, had played. The ground was littered with the dead and dying.
The Prince began reining in his horse. He was five-and-twenty men. Perhaps twice that number lay as casualties upon the grass. During the few moments which passed as he considered his response he lost a man. A light throwing spear was flung from within the trees, striking one of them in the back and toppling him from his horse. The action was not just ahead of them. There were men hidden in the near trees, driven there or lying in wait. One had seen a new target, temptingly close, and it had cost one of Eadward’s thegns their life. The shock of it sparked the Prince’s next order.
“Onward,” screamed Eadward.
His men well knew how to respond. When the Prince stopped and quitted his horse, nearly all of them would do so as well, ready to fight. The four who had brought up the rear would take charge of all the horses. Their role was to gather the mounts, lead them to relative safety, and protect the animals from poaching. Only under the most dire of circumstances, or being summoned by the Prince, could they abandon their charges.
Eadward, leading the rush onto the field, gave little thought to Edwin at his side. The young Lord of Kilton had his own body-guard, and now he would need it. He thought instead of the insult of his downed thegn, and that his long search through Anglia had finally yielded fruit.
Edwin was riding with Eorconbeald at his right. When the Prince spurred his horse for the field, their ranks opened, and two of Eadward’s own body-guards closed up around him. It gave an opening for Alwin to ride up next Edwin’s left. Worr and Cadmar came just behind.
Edwin’s heart was pounding in his breast. In the span of a few horse strides they had gone from riding watchfully along a road to a battle in which they would now engage. On the grassy field onto which they had turned men of the enemy were coming to meet them, forming up in ranks, waving their weapons, and shouting out taunts. Much nearer, Edwin could hear the angry oaths uttered by Eadward’s men as they galloped forward.
He thought of his brother. Ceric was due to meet up with them, past due, as Eadward had expected his return yesterday from his scouting trip. He should have ridden back to them along much the same route as they took now, following the stream. The sudden fear that Ceric might have been caught up in this, might already be dead upon the field, overtook him. He forced the thought from his mind by fixing his eyes on the line of men brandishing spears ahead.
As his horse ran under him Edwin clung to a single thought: I am Godwin’s son. I am Godwin’s son. I will prove this now.
The sword held against his chest was gift of Ælfred, King; but the words he muttered to himself were of his father’s blood in his veins.
Before the Prince raised his hand to rein in to a stop, Edwin’s horse, legs extended in its run, plunged forward, staggering. Its front legs folded under it, and it fell. Edwin never saw the spear which had killed the animal beneath him; it hit the beast from behind. He went flying over the downed animal’s neck, tumbling once, to hit the ground sprawling on his chest. He lost both helmet and sword in the fall. His sword baldric slipped over his head, tangled a moment under his arm, and dropped to his left. The helmet fell off before he landed and rolled away. His spear-point hit the soil and stuck there, vibrating with the force of impact. He knew none of this; the wind had been knocked out of him. He did not know how Eorconbeald and Alwin were of a sudden on either side of him, hauling him up. Alwin grabbed his sword, but the helmet had been kicked by another horse and was out of range. He did not see Cadmar’s horse, just behind his own, rear up in protest of his fallen mount’s screams, nor the old warrior-monk be tossed to the ground.
Eorconbeald and Alwin ran with the stunned Edwin to the scant shelter of the trees. They could defend him there, but not on an open field of battle. Worr had at once gone after the horses of the two body-guards, and that of Cadmar. They must not lose them. The horse-thegn whistled a stop to the Kilton horses. They knew him well, and he was able to gather them up by overtaking and stopping Eorconbeald’s horse. Grabbing the first, he circled with the other two and pulled them back towards the road and the thegns who would receive them.
Cadmar was upon the ground, sword now in hand, trying to raise himself to stand. The old wound to his leg taken at the Twelfth Night attack on Kilton had ever impaired his movement. Worr spurred his horse to go back to him. He was too late. A spear-wielding Dane ran to the struggling figure, and standing over him, ended his efforts with a single thrust. The assailant snatched at the sword which had dropped from Cadmar’s hand. The Dane ran with it, pursued by others of the Prince’s men.
Edwin, watching this from the tree line, began to rise from where he sat. “Cadmar!” he called.
Eorconbeald pulled him back. The Lord of Kilton could not be the one to avenge the death, and both body-guards knew it. Blood ran from Edwin’s broken nose and split lip. A broad scrape on his right cheek where he had landed coloured that side of his face crimson. A man could fight with such, and many did. But they saw Edwin’s eyes, glazed enough that when he tried to stand he wobbled as if flown with mead. He had a hurt to the head that only the passage of a few days would resolve.
Those eyes were fixed on the body of the warrior-monk. “Cadmar,” he said again, as if to himself. Cadmar had left Kilton to serve at his side, and now he was dead. Edwin had eighteen years, had seen his first action, and lost one revered by all of Kilton. He sat there, shaking his head at all which had happened i
n the narrow span of time since they had come along that road.
Alwin had pulled linen from his belt, and was now pressing it against Edwin’s face. It forced Edwin’s thoughts from the body of Cadmar to the men on either side of him. Cadmar’s Fate would have been his own, had his body-guards not leapt from their horses to pluck him from the field. He saw Eorconbeald, also staring at Cadmar. To see the old man die so vile a death was a blow to them as well; he had trained all of them.
It was hard for Edwin to compass. He could scarce hold on to any one thought. His body had been slammed to the ground and he felt that his chest might bear the impress of his ring-tunic, even though one of leather be between it and his skin. His inability to draw breath without pain told him that more than one rib was cracked. His head and face throbbed. He held the wad of linen against his upper lip, attempting to staunch a flow of blood from his nose which would not stop. Blood ran down the soaked linen to the wrist holding it.
He kept looking over the field and its dead. His horse was dead, a mass of chestnut-coated flesh lying there, neck extended, head twisted up in a pose no living horse could hold. Ceric had given him that horse; it was one of the last foals born to their mother’s bay mare, that she had ridden from Anglia. Was Ceric too here, lying as Cadmar and that horse were?
“You stay with Edwin,” Eorconbeald was now telling Alwin. He must return to the field and find the Prince. The troop he rode in with was scattered and broken, and looking across the greensward he could scarce tell who those fighting were. Eadward’s men all knew one another’s shields, but shields would shatter under prolonged impact, and a man would pick up any he could. For one close enough, the men of Wessex could be picked out by the seax spanning their bellies.
What Eorconbeald could see was that Danes were seemingly also fighting Danes. He watched certain Danes join with Eadward’s thegns, while others fought all comers without distinction. It made any progress in the struggle, that point at which the tide turned for the victors, impossible to call. It looked confusion unto chaos, with no small amount of panic.
Eorconbeald stood, and took up his spear. He would run, skirting the trees, to get closer, then join in when he spotted any of Eadward’s thegns.
Hrald lifted his head upward to the Sun. It was hard to see. It was obscured not only by the leafy branches rising above, but for the dimness of the orb in the over-clouded sky. Hrald was not only following Onund, he must also not get lost. Any portion of the wood seemed much the same as that he had just come through. Other than a fallen tree or stump, or a large and mossy boulder, it was hard to mark any unique feature to help guide him back. Onund kept just enough ahead of him so that he could catch sight of the red and blue shield on his back. Hrald had not long been trailing him when the growth opened up. They moved through clusters of smooth-bark beech saplings, standing as grey sentinels.
Hrald recoiled. An arrow whizzed by his head. It hit a beech just past him, close enough so that fragments of bark flew up near Hrald’s face. He pulled the arrow out, its fletching still trembling. He broke the shaft in two, and took his shield on his arm in protection. He knew Onund had no bow; another was here, hunting him. He must stick closely to the saplings and larger trees, denying the man another chance.
Ceric cantered down the road from his northerly route. Rounding a bend obscured by trees he was confronted by the sight of two men locked in battle. They spilled out before him, fighting at one edge of the road, warriors with swords and shields. He had not heard them over the sound of his horse, and jingling bridle metal.
He had seen no human for five days. He reined to an abrupt stop, put his helmet on, and moved towards them, hugging the far side of the road to provide some cover for his approach. The men vanished, seemingly into the trees. As Ceric moved up on his horse, a grassy plain opened before him, on which a battle had been waged.
His heart skipped. The Prince should have been coming this way. He scanned the edges of the field. Along the tree line were men and horses both. One of the horses, bearing no rider, had sprung from his saddle the golden dragon battle pennon of Wessex. Eadward was here.
He swept his eyes across the field. A horse with at least one broken foreleg was struggling to rise, thrashing and kicking out its back legs as it did so. Another horse lay dead, the spear that had downed it rising at a shallow angle from its rump.
The bodies of men were harder to count. They lay alone, on their backs or faces, and together, arms and legs entangled in a death embrace. A few men ran furtively from body to body, snatching at weaponry. Some still fought, small knots of them. Further up the road a long train of horses stood. A few mounted men rode amongst them, cutting off any who wandered. Ceric could not know who they were. His duty was to Eadward, and he must find him. He moved his horse back to the margin of the road, jumped down, and tied him. He threaded his arm through the loop and boss grip of his shield, took spear in hand, and set off.
He was not the only man making his way either along the trees or seemingly from them. His transit brought him close to several of the dead and dying. A Dane. Another Dane. A third. One of Eadward’s men, Felgild. His eyes fastened a moment on Felgild, who lay there with a dark red bloom by his extended right arm. He had beaten Ceric, and badly too, at dice before he left on this scouting trip. The hand that Felgild had collected Ceric’s silver with now lay a distance from his body. He had bled to death. The hand lay open, palm up, cupping the man’s own blood.
The branches of a waist-high shrub to the left of Ceric crackled. A Dane was pushing through it to get to Ceric. The man leapt out before him, teeth bared in a war-cry, shield in place, spear tight in an overhand grip and ready to thrust. Ceric raised his own spear-point, right at the Dane’s face.
The man ducked, leapt forward, and made a touch at Ceric’s shield. It was not enough to knock it away, but it was proof of the Dane’s desire for a quick end to the contest. He wore no helmet, and his eyes flitted more than once to the fine one atop the head of Ceric. The man even licked his lips, as if the taste of victory was near.
While still looking at Ceric’s head, he made a jab down at Ceric’s right, and forward foot. It might have caught Ceric off guard, but Worr and Cadmar both had played this feint with him.
He moved back, out of range of the Dane’s spear-point, to try a lunging strike at the man’s own shield rim. The Dane responded with a second jab at his foot. It fell short before him, enough so that Ceric stepped on the top of the spear-point just where it entered the shaft. The shaft snapped, the iron point trapped under the booted foot of Ceric. It left the Dane with a pole of jagged ash. The man gaped, and Ceric had his opening.
The Dane gave an angry cry, and swung the shaft through the air. He must drop it to pull the sword at his side, and Ceric made sure not to give him the chance. He drove right for the open arm holding the shaft, catching the Dane in the armpit. The links of ring-shirt gave way under the force of Ceric’s strength propelling the iron forward.
Ceric took just enough time to toss the Dane’s sword for safekeeping into the shrub the man had broken through to reach him. He would find the body again marking the place, that was sure.
By the tree line a second riderless horse bearing a pennon appeared. He made his way steadily towards it, keeping to the edge and scanning the trees as he did so. The horses were moving about, tossing their heads, and more than one of them trailing a rein. But as he neared he saw the second pennon to be the war-flag made by Edgyth. The golden dragon she had made for Edwin had a curling tail spiraling back over the beast’s head. It was utterly distinct from any other.
He spoke aloud, yet to himself. “Edwin.”
His brother was here as well. This was the horse of one of his body-guards.
He would risk crossing the field to reach the horse the faster. He ran, his movement bringing him close to the dead animal which had been speared. He jerked to a stop. It was Edwin’s horse.
His blood ran cold in his veins, seeing this. He looked to the nearby bod
ies, dropping shield and spear to turn two of them over. Neither was his younger brother.
He stood a moment by the dead horse, open-mouthed, panting from exertion and dread.
A man groaned. He picked up his spear, ready to pole any Dane who lived. To the right of Edwin’s horse, a large man with grey hair lay on his side. The uppermost shoulder ran with blood; he was lying in it.
It was Cadmar.
Ceric dropped on his knees at his side. He feared trying to turn the old man on his back, and instead took up the free right hand. He grasped it in both his own.
“Cadmar. It is Ceric. I am here with you.”
The warrior-monk’s hand moved between his own, reaching, the fingers clutching the forearm of Ceric. Cadmar’s eyes were closed, but the well-known face contorted in a way which told that his words had been heard. The hand upon Ceric’s forearm now relaxed, and he again held it in his own.
“Edwin,” the old man rasped out.
Ceric looked to the tree line, where the restless horses moved. Two men now stood there. Though bloodied, Ceric was sure the second was his brother.
“Edwin lives, he lives,” he assured the dying man. To have this granted to them both, allaying his fear and Cadmar’s final concern, seemed the greatest boon of his life.
The warrior-monk exhaled, a long breath of relief and release. The lips moved. Ceric brought his head closer to receive the gift of his friend’s final words. It came as a gasp, followed by a final gentle exhale, almost a sigh of recognition.
“Jesus…” breathed the old man.
For Me Fate Wove This Page 29
