Eirik steps out of the centre of our triangle. “Make it quick, lads. This rain is getting even on my nerves.”
In the end, we both rush at Waerla. The Saxon reaches him first. Waerla steps away, slips in the mud and pulls her with him. They wrestle for a few seconds, then she untangles herself with a flurry of blows to his face and stomach. I grab her by the tunic and throw her off him. I fall myself in the process. It is a messy, sloppy fight; we scramble and stumble, rise and fall, the trampled mud turns into swamp around our feet. I land a few punches, but none hard enough to stop her. She fights like a desperate animal, scratching, kicking and biting. She’s not well trained in combat, but she makes up for it with sheer fierceness and surprising strength in her arms. There is madness in her eyes. In any other circumstances I’d want to know her story, to know why she’s so frantic to win this fight, what made her want to join the bandits, what will happen to her if she fails; maybe I’d even let her defeat me. But I can’t afford sentiment now. Too much is at stake. The future of the Iutish settlement; Rhedwyn’s place at Wortigern’s court.
She throws a broad punch, missing my face by an inch. I feel the rain splash from her fist on my nose. I dodge, grab her wrist with one hand and slam her arm with the other, tearing her shoulder out of the socket. She cries out more in despair than in pain. I throw her to the ground and turn to face Waerla.
He rams his head into my chest, knocking all air from my lungs. I fall, with him on top of me. He grabs me by the throat and starts choking me. This is the first time he takes a closer look at my face.
“Ash?”
His grip falters. I undercut his hands and roll over, so now he’s underneath me. I lean to his ear.
“Tell no one you know me,” I say over the rain. “Or I will do more than just beat you up.”
Fear glints in his eyes and his grip on me falters. I hook him in the liver and kick him off me with both feet. He falls into the mud with a great splash. I wade up and pin him to the ground. He’s slippery, but I manage to hold him tight until he has no more strength left to fight. I catch him looking at something to the side. I turn my head just in time to see the Saxon’s foot heading for my head.
I duck just enough for the kick to glance off my brow, but it still stuns me for a moment. Deciding I’m the more dangerous opponent, the girl focuses her attacks on me, but with her right arm disabled, she can only kick and swing at me with her off-hand. I grab her again, trip her up with a leg hook, and toss her onto Waerla, who’s just scrambled up from the mud.
My lungs ache with every breath. Waerla’s head-butt may have cracked a rib. I need to finish this off quickly, before the crack turns into a full-blown fracture.
I wait for Waerla to stand to his feet, then I land a mighty hook on his face. Blood spurts from his nose and from my knuckles. The blow knocks him out for good. He falls flat on his back into the sludge. The Saxon girl lunges at me with the ferocity of a wounded boar. I let her throw me to the ground and tire herself from the punches thrown with her left hand. When I sense the blows come slower and weaker, I reach around her and pull her down in a tight lock. Her jaw snaps inches from my ear, but I manage to keep her head just far enough from me.
“Enough!” cries Eirik. “I don’t need you to kill yourselves for this.”
He orders his men to pull us apart. The girl still howls, snaps and flails. Poor Waerla is dragged away, still unconscious. Eirik stands over me and helps me up.
“Can’t you let her stay?” I ask, nodding at the Saxon.
“Caught your heart, eh?” He chuckles. “She’s got spirit, I’ll give you that. You’d have to share your food and tent with her. We only have enough for one.”
I don’t want her like that, I tell him. Rhedwyn is the only woman for me. I just feel sorry for her.
“I can’t let you swap places. You’ve proven your worth. She hasn’t.”
I take another look at her. She’s given up fighting, and is now just hanging in the arms of the two bandits holding her, slumped and resigned. Dark blood oozes from her nose and from a deep scratch she somehow got on her left shin.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll share my spot with her, if you let me.”
Eirik comes up to her and asks her about the arrangement. She looks up at me and spits. “I don’t need your mercy!” she shouts.
I don’t know how to respond to that. I turn my eyes away from her furious gaze.
“It’s either this or back to the Oars with you,” says Eirik.
Oars? What oars? Now I’m even more intrigued about her story. She slumps again, stares down and murmurs.
“What did you say?” asks Eirik.
“I said fine.”
Eirik gives the order to let her go. “Clean those two up,” he says. “And throw the other one out on the highway where you found him.”
As they pull Waerla away, he wakes up. The last thing I see are his eyes, wet from rain and tears, filled with fear and vengeance.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LAY OF EIRIK
Eirik gives us no time to settle into our new lives. As soon as we’re rested from the fight, he orders the camp to pack up and move to a new location, further west, ever deeper into the forest — and still further from where I was hoping to find Aelle.
“Too many people know we’re here,” he explains.
I’m given a roll of raw cloth and a coil of ropes, with the understanding that I’m to fashion my own tent out of these components once we reach our destination. Just as Eirik has warned me, there’s only enough cloth for a single tent — and a small one at that. I’m also presented with a long knife, of inferior quality to any weapon I have wielded since childhood, a blanket, a clay bowl, a water-skin — and one of those dapple-green cloaks everyone’s wearing. The rust-coloured stab hole in its back leaves no doubt as to what happened to its previous owner. The Saxon girl is burdened with a load of iron and firewood, hanging from her back and front like saddle bags on a pack pony. She endures it without so much as a grunt, and when I offer to help her carry, she harrumphs and moves ahead of me until one of the bandits scolds her for needlessly wasting energy.
We march in a tight column. I count maybe twenty of us. Not all look like warriors. As warbands go, this one’s on the small side, but sufficient enough to ravage a village or rob a merchant’s carriage. We come upon the same babbling brook I’ve seen before, now turned by the night’s rain into a roaring current. We follow it until we reach a winding river valley. On a calm day, the river must be no bigger than the Loudborne, but after the storm it’s grown too wide and too wild to attempt a crossing.
“We go upstream,” Eirik orders, unhappily.
“What about the Stone Bridge?” asks one of the bandits.
“It’s too heavily guarded. Don’t you remember what happened last time?”
Searching for a passable ford adds at least an hour to our route and it’s dark again by the time we reach the new camp site. All through the march, the girl obstinately refuses to answer any of my questions. She won’t even give me her name.
It’s a drier piece of land than the mud swamp we’ve left behind us, a thin layer of grass and moss on top of a limestone hill crowned with a clump of golden-blooming gorse. By the light of torches we start to set up camp. I roll out the cloth and try to cut it down as best I can — something I’ve never had to do before. Seeing me struggle, the girl grabs the cloth and the knife from my hand.
“Give me that,” she snarls. “Go into the wood, find some hazel for the poles.”
By the time I return with two sufficiently sturdy hazel canes, the cloth and the rope are all neatly cut and prepared to set up.
“You’ve done this before,” I remark. She shrugs and tells me to hold the poles while she throws the cloth on them and tightens the guy ropes — wincing from the pain in the dislocated arm. I spread the blanket inside. It’s small, even for just myself.
“You go first,” I offer. “I’ll take the early watch.”
�
�If you think this will get you into my breeches, you can forget it,” she says, and disappears inside before I can even fathom an answer.
Life in the camp is dreary and monotonous. Every day I set out to gather firewood, start a fire and hang out my tunic to dry — the storm deteriorated into a mild drizzle, making everything just cold and damp enough to make everyone feel miserable. I carry my clay bowl to the porridge cauldron three times a day; on the mid-day meal I get a piece of meat thrown in. When I don’t try to sharpen my knife into a weapon of war, I whittle arrows and weave string for traps. I haven’t done this since my youth, and the Saxon girl is much better and faster at all this wood craft than I am, and she never misses the opportunity to let me know with a scornful scowl.
I never noticed when it happened, but I’ve grown used to city comforts. I miss my soft Londin bed, a solid roof over my head, a meal at the inn that I don’t have to help catch. I miss the noise and smell of the market, the hustle of a harbour, the din of a highway. The ancient writers may have praised the Arcadian wilderness, but I find nothing pleasing about this forest life — except for when the sun peaks through the clouds and shines on the aspen leaves, making them gleam like precious emeralds.
Eirik has us train in pairs. Armed with a firewood hatchet against my knife, the girl throws herself into the mock battles with the same fierce despair as in our first bout, as if still fearing that losing against me will result in her being thrown out of the camp. I let her defeat me almost every time; the training is just another pointless burden for me. I’ve seen what the other recruits can do — about half of us are newcomers, gathered over the summer months by Eirik from all over the Roman road — and their martial prowess is at best average. Not that they’re in much danger of testing themselves against a skilled opponent any time soon. We’re in the middle of nowhere here, in the deepest forest, at least a day’s march from the nearest road or settlement. I’m beginning to wonder if any part of my plan has any chance to work in these conditions. What if it’s going to take months before our little group gets to meet Aelle — if at all?
When she finally notices I’m not giving the fight my full attention, the girl grows even more furious. She tumbles me to the ground and pins me down, with the hatchet blade at my throat.
“Fight me!”
In her voice I hear a familiar echo of Eadgith’s irritated cry at the pretend battlefield of Ariminum, in my childhood years. Would she really cut me? She could always say it was a training accident… I turn serious, grab her by the arms and flip her over my head. I spin around and lock her legs with mine. I cast the hatchet out of her hand with a flick of a wrist. Now the roles have turned, and it’s my blade against her jugular.
“Tell me your name,” I say.
She struggles and writhes under me. I throw the knife away. She can tell I’m not going to cut her, so it’s pointless to threaten her with it, and in the fervour of the fighting one of us might get hurt. But I’m not going to let her off easily this time. The holds I’ve learned from Fulco can be broken only by someone either familiar with the art of wrestling, or much stronger than me, and the girl, despite her valiant effort, is neither. Her only hope is to tire me out; we both must be wondering now who will falter first.
“I can teach you this lock,” I tell her. “Just let me know your name.”
She snaps her teeth like an attack dog, but I’ve fought her enough times to keep my face and limbs away from her ferocious bite. For a second, she frees her right elbow enough to jab me in the gut, but I soon manage to clasp her again. In the corner of my eye I notice we’ve begun to draw attention of others in the camp. They shout lewd remarks in our direction. I imagine our entangled writhing in the mud must look less like fighting to them and more like violent love-making. This makes her more furious than anything I’ve done before. Pink spittle appears in the corners of her mouth.
“Hilla,” she says at last.
“What?”
“My name’s Hilla.”
The sudden confession surprises me. My grip slackens only for a blink of an eye, but it’s enough for her to wriggle out and, to the bawdy applause of our audience, knee me in the crotch with full force. The world goes black for a few seconds. When I come to, she’s pinning me down again, this time making sure I can’t repeat the earlier throw. She punches me again, twice, before Eirik appears and orders her to stop and help me up.
“I’m fine,” I tell him, wiping blood from my nose. She reaches out her hand.
“Don’t forget the deal,” she says, quietly. “I want that lock.”
Hilla proves a better student than I am a teacher. Tutored by someone like Fulco, she would soon become a formidable opponent, but I can only provide her with the basics. At the end of the sparring day we’re both exhausted and frustrated with my inability to transfer the skills I’ve learned from the Frank.
That night she lets me lie beside her in our little tent. We sleep back to back, using our shirts for pillows; it’s too hot for clothes with the two of us inside. Her warm, sweaty skin touches mine.
“Oars?” I ask in the darkness.
“Hmm?” She stirs, angrily.
“What oars did Eirik threaten you with back then?”
I can feel her grunt with annoyance. “Why do you insist on bothering everyone with these incessant questions?”
“I’m only curious,” I reply. “I haven’t experienced much of the life outside my Master’s villa.”
She harrumphs. “My life is nothing worth talking about.”
Whether it’s the mugginess, or the touch of Hilla’s bare skin on my back, I sleep badly. In the scattered, broken dreams that haunt me through the night, I see Rhedwyn, closing in on me, then getting away, into the darkness. Far away, she wears the green dress I saw her wearing that first time, only it’s clinging even more to her skin than in reality. As she gets nearer, the dress disappears. She reaches out her slender arms towards me and pulls me in.
In the absence of real experience, my mind makes up a phantasm. In these dreams, she is every girl I’d lain with. She has Eadgith’s full breasts smothering my face; she has the pale thighs of the honey vendor around me; she moans under my touch like the girl I met last year in Robriwis; and she smells… She smells of Hilla’s sweat.
I’m woken by a soft elbow jab under my shoulder blade.
“Gods, will you stop this stirring and moaning,” says Hilla, groggily. “Or I’ll make you sleep outside again, you horny cock.”
The next morning, Eirik gathers us all in a circle. The last time he did that was when he ordered us to move the camp.
“Our time of idleness is over,” he announces. “I’m sure you’re all itching for a battle. Those of you who have joined us this season will finally have the chance to test yourselves. The rest of you know the drill already. We’re going to find ourselves some wealas to fight.”
“Is it the Stone Bridge?” asks one of the older bandits.
“Not yet, Ubba. We need the warchief’s band before we can raid the bridge.”
The warchief. So we are waiting for Aelle to join us in this remote wilderness… But here is no good for me. We’re too far away from Londin and the Iutes, too deep into Regins territory. I don’t know what Stone Bridge they’re all referring to, but if I remember the maps and our current position correctly, they might mean the old bridge over the River Arn. There’s no way I could get the Iutes to come here in time for battle — even if I could somehow get the message to them from here…
“Make yourselves ready. We march in the morning, if the weather’s good.”
This is it. The briefing is over. There is no strategy, no explanation of tactics, no discussion of a plan. We don’t even know the target. Eirik looks like a man who knows what he’s doing, so I trust he knows no further briefing is necessary.
He takes me and Hilla to the side once everyone else is dismissed. He sits down on a tree stump, hands on his knees.
“I hear you both hate Britons,” he tells us. �
��You’ll get your chance to kill some tomorrow.”
“Good,” says Hilla coolly.
His words run deep through me, a stark reminder of the dangers of my mission. Kill Britons. I knew it would come to this sooner or later. I have joined an army of bandits. Killing is what they do for a living. I was hoping that, as one of those freshly enlisted, I could get away with staying at the back during the actual fighting, but Eirik soon disavows me of that notion.
“I want you two to lead my new recruits into battle,” he says. “While I command my veterans.”
“Lead…?” I say. Hilla’s eyes flash.
“I’ve been observing you two,” Eirik replies. “You’re not only the best of the younglings, but you work well together.”
This is news to either of us. We glance at each other with raised eyebrows. We’ve done little but fight and argue since joining the warband.
Hilla shrugs. “I can lead, but I don’t know who will follow.”
“They will follow,” says Eirik with a half-grin. “You’ll see.”
She nods and walks away, playing with the hatchet. I stay behind.
“You’re hesitant,” Eirik notices.
“I’ve never killed anyone before,” I lie.
He studies me for a long time. “Odd.” He frowns. “You don’t look so green to me.”
I force a snicker. “Mere bluster, I’m afraid. The truth is, I’m all shaking inside with trepidation.”
“I understand.” He stands up and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Would it help if I told you the people we fight today — deserve to die?”
“How does anyone deserve to die?”
He leans closer. “They’re bandits, but not like us. They’re a Briton warband. A bloody bunch of evil-doers. A few weeks ago, they descended upon a village just two miles west of here. Murdered everyone. They knew they weren’t supposed to be there.”
The Saxon Spears Page 27
