by Katy Moran
“Don’t know – she was up on the wall with Ariulf and the other archers – haven’t seen her for ages—”
The weaving-shed door burst open, belching flame. Cole fell down beside him, Essa went to kneel at his side but Red grabbed the back of his tunic. “It’s no use, he’s dead – he took a sword in the belly.”
Blinded by tears and smoke, Essa followed Red into the weaving-shed. The great looms were burning as they leaned against the wooden walls, half finished cloth in flames. He heard screaming and saw women and children huddled up on the platform where they stored raw wool in sacks. Suddenly, Red was no longer beside him – someone up on the platform screamed Essa’s name and he whirled around to find a Mercian swinging a blood-soaked sword. His hand flashed to the knife at his belt and it flew from his fingers, like a deadly silver bird. The Mercian fell, howling, the knife sticking from his right eye. Then Red was on his feet again, a long cut behind his ear spilling blood down his neck. He reached up to take a child passed down to him from the platform. Essa, understanding, turned and fought at Red’s back as the women ran out the side door, brandishing knives and swords, hurrying the children out towards the grain mounds. He could still see Cole lying in the doorway, his silvery-pale hair soaked in blood, his head twisted at an odd angle. A deep, animal rage filled Essa’s body and a red mist clouded his sight. Someone ran at him – he killed the man instantly, his sword-arm moving so fast the blade blurred before his eyes. The Silver Serpent was thirsty and he let her drink.
He could hear the women and children screaming from outside, and knew someone must have seen them making for the orchard. Flames leaped about his feet and he ran through them, feeling nothing, out into the courtyard. The women were shrieking, their faces twisted with fear and fury, shielding the children with their bodies as they fended off the yellow-faced Mercian soldiers, some stabbing at them with long spears, others throwing knives, stones, even an old shoe. Essa leapt forward, hacking and slashing.
“Essa, behind you!” screamed Starling, and he turned, blinded by flying mud as a Mercian on horseback thundered across the yard, dark hair flying out beneath a boar-crested helmet.
“Fall back, for the Lady’s sake,” said the rider to the warriors. “They’re just women and brats!”
It was Wulf. Essa lowered his sword. Wulf pushed back his helmet. They stared at each other a moment, then Wulf looked away.
“Fall back,” he said again. “The Wolves are retreating, follow them, get out of here.”
And then he was gone, riding through the gateway and away.
Essa glanced back over his shoulders – Starling and the other women were running towards the grain mounds, hurrying the children before them. “Essa, come on!” shouted Starling. “Come with us, we can get out by the orchard!”
But where was Hild, where was Lark? He heard himself say, “No – do you run, Starling. I’ll watch your back.”
The courtyard was still seething with yellow-faced men on horseback – most of them were following Wulf but not all. Three were riding towards Essa, two swinging axes, one a sword. And then he caught a flash of white-blonde hair – a girl scrambling up the wall to escape two more horsemen riding towards her, laughing and jeering. She was about to be crushed beneath the horses’ hooves. Lark.
Time seemed to slow down. The three men were nearly upon him – his sword-arm was heavy, he could not lift it – it was like being trapped in a bad dream. Then he saw what he had to do – the Mercians might want to kill him but their horses did not care whether he lived or died.
He felt the tug in the pit of his stomach and wondered if he had died without feeling it and that was why his spirit was leaving his body. But he knew he would not be so lucky. He closed his eyes. If he died here, it wouldn’t be a painless journey to the Land of Mist, it would be—
And then Essa knew how it felt to have a creature riding on his back, to be surrounded by screaming men and sharp, biting metal.
He was not just one horse but many. Penda’s horse-folk had not forgotten the days when their kind ran free in herds across wide grassy plains, before they were taught to carry these little two-legged beasts.
Run free again. Run free.
Essa sank to his knees and looked up, just in time to see an axe swing past his head – but then the Mercian dropped it, screaming a curse as his horse reared up on her back legs. Almost as one creature, every horse in the village bucked and thundered towards the gate, heedless of the men riding them.
And then they were gone. When he turned to look, so had Starling and the children. They had escaped. Thank God, he told himself wearily, feeling hot tears spring to his eyes. Thank God.
WHEN Essa woke, his back and neck and the backs of his legs were boiling hot, the rest of him cold. He sat up, aching all over, and saw it was because he was lying just yards from the burning remains of the weaving-hall. He watched for a moment. The roof had fallen in, and a thick black column of smoke stained the sky. It was Cole’s funeral pyre. Cole, Cole. He could not believe Cole was dead. It could not be true. Where was Red? Had he escaped with Starling and the others? And what about Hild and Ariulf?
And Lark…
The light had changed. He got to his feet, loosely gripping the handle of his sword. The courtyard was nearly empty now but he could still hear screaming, metal clashing on metal. The battle had moved on, the village left behind. Broken bodies littered the ground; sightless eyes stared up at the sky. It was a beautiful day: a clear, unblemished blue spring sky arching over the world.
He found Egric and Hild lying under the ash tree like a pair of lovers, his body curled around hers, his arms crossed protectively across her chest. Essa’s heart ached at the sight of her; he kneeled down beside them, just to make sure, but her eyes were wide open and a trickle of blood had set as it seeped from the corner of her mouth.
No, Essa. This won’t do, will it? He remembered her wrapping a shawl around his shoulders, getting up and following her towards the stables. She had been his true mother, and she was dead. He stared down at the ring on his middle finger – Wulf’s ring, but Egric’s had been there first. His hands were smeared with blood, but the gold band still shone, fire of the sea. He was a free man now. He need not wear anyone’s ring.
He got to his feet, going from corpse to corpse, looking for faces he knew, wondering if this would make it all seem more real.
He found his father by the forge, lying in the shadow cast by the open door. He could see the ruin within, where Mercians and Wolf Folk alike had raided it for every last weapon, every last piece of pig iron that could be used to smash a man’s brains out.
Cai lay on his side. Essa sat on the floor next to him and saw that his father was still breathing, gasping for breath. His tunic was soaked in blood.
“Elfgift.” The word came out in a whisper, the sigh of wind moving through trees.
“No, it’s me. It’s Essa.”
“Hold me, Elfgift.” Cai turned his face towards him. His eyes were wide and glowing with a feverish light. The blood on the front of his tunic was nearly black and Essa knew he would die, because it was heart-blood. Cai spoke in their own language, and it sounded like water falling over rocks. He was heavier than Essa expected, but hardly made a sound as Essa lifted his father’s head and shoulders, letting them rest in his lap. He leaned back against the forge door and felt the wood warm against his back. He stared across the courtyard at the smoke and ash billowing from the roof of the weaving-shed.
“Elfgift, I tried to keep—”
Essa looked down. The fierce brightness in Cai’s eyes was dimming. His hand moved, reaching for something.
“Elfgift.”
Essa half expected to look up and see her standing there, but of course she was not. Instead he let Cai’s fingers close around his hand.
It took Cai a long time to die, longer than Essa had expected, after Cole had gone so quickly. He leaned against the forge door watching the weaving-hall burn to the ground as the sun sank lo
wer and lower until it rested above the horizon, a fat, orange ball. Cole was in there, burning too. At last Cai’s chest stopped moving and his body lay still across Essa’s lap. He did not move even then. His left arm was still numb and Cai was heavy. It was too hard. He was tired. Everywhere he looked, there were broken bodies lying like woollen dolls dropped by children. Something reminded him of the autumn. It was the smell of blood that rose above the village when they slaughtered animals to salt their meat for winter. He thought for a moment that he might be sick, but in the end nothing came up but a choking cough. A moving shadow brought relief from the fading heat and he closed his eyes. It would be good to sleep again now. He had not slept at all last night, leaning against that tree, waiting for morning.
“Essa, do you wake up. Don’t close your eyes.” Her face was blackened with soot, smudged with tears, and there was a long, purple bruise on her jaw. Dirty white-blonde hair had stuck to her forehead, matted with dried blood. She was holding something in the crook of one arm – it looked like a bundle of cloth. She lifted a dusty wooden cup to his lips and he saw tooled leather archer’s braces strapped to her forearms. So Lark had been fighting too, like a shield maiden in one of the old songs.
“Cole’s dead,” Essa said, and looked down at Cai, lying still in his lap. Tears spilled down his face, dripping off his chin.
“I know,” Lark said. “I know. Granfer and Ma, too.” She sounded strangely calm, and he knew that, like him, she did not really believe it had happened.
How could Onela be dead? Essa remembered the old man sitting with him in the stables, guarding him from an angry ghost. He was so kind, and he had lived so long. It did not seem fair his life should have been snatched away by a Mercian spear.
He took the cup and swallowed but most of the water dribbled down his chin. He let it trickle cool down his neck, into his tunic, down his belly. He threw the cup to the side and reached for Lark, pulling her close. Cai’s sightless eyes looked up at their embrace. Her hair smelled not of lavender, but of sweat, and blood.
The bundle in her arms seemed to twitch, but he hardly noticed. They broke apart, she shifted the parcel of cloth so it rested on her hip, and helped him move Cai so he lay on the ground. Essa stood up, his arm tight around her shoulders. The bundle moved again.
“Lark, what is it? What are you holding?”
She stared at him for a moment, shocked, as if she had forgotten about it. “Oh!” She folded back a corner of the bloodstained cloth.
It was a child. Lark was holding a baby – no more than a few weeks old, and fast asleep.
Essa stared at her, not understanding. Lark, standing right next to him after all this time he had longed for her, and she was holding a baby.
“She’s all I found,” Lark whispered. “The only one left.”
They stood gazing down at the baby as one of her tiny hands made a fist. Essa felt cold with horror that Lark had found no one else alive, but at the same time happy that this small creature had survived. He tried to cast his mind back to the village before he’d left. Which of the girls had been with child? He couldn’t remember. Not Starling again? No. Who else?
“She’s Hild’s,” Lark whispered at last. “Essa…”
He reached down and gently nudged the cloth away from the child’s face with a fingertip. Her mouth worked quietly as she slept. Her eyelids were like the wings of a pale butterfly newly hatched, laced with a tracing of delicate blue veins.
“Hild and Egric,” he said.
Lark nodded, smiling. “I don’t know how you didn’t see it,” she said. “Six months gone she was, when you left. All the women knew, but it’s funny, when Hild told the men, some of them hadn’t guessed. I’ve never seen Ariulf look so shocked. She’d been trying to tell you.”
“Six months gone,” Essa repeated, staring down at the child.
“She came early, almost a whole moon early, and we didn’t think she’d live, but she did,” Lark said. “Hild wanted to show her to you when you got back.”
“Only I didn’t come back.”
“But you did. You did.”
“Where is everyone?” said Essa at last. “They’re not all—”
She shook her head. “Most of them got out. We were up on the wall this morning, and we saw you all riding past, so we hid the children and the old ones in the weaving-shed. Apart from Granfer. He wouldn’t hide – he said if he had to go, he’d rather it was a fight that took him than a fever. We couldn’t get out, you see, because the Mercians were all in the woods. But once we saw them all ride out, we decided to make a run for it and get away from here till they’d gone. We nearly didn’t make it, see, but then one of the Mercians told them all to get gone, and then all their horses just went berserk. I’ve never seen anything like it – they all just ran mad and nobody could do anything with them, it was as if they were all cursed. They’re all away now.”
Despite everything, Essa felt a tug of happiness. They were safe; most of them were safe. It hadn’t all been for nothing. “What about Red,” he said, his voice cracking. “And Ariulf?”
Lark nodded. “They got out too, but they were here till the end. Ariulf tried to force me to go with them but I cut away and came back. And I found her.” She looked down at the bundle. “They’d hid her in the linen kist but she was crying and I heard. Thought you might be in here somewhere, too.”
Essa took her hand. “You’re a fool,” he said. “Ariulf shouldn’t’ve let you come back.”
She shrugged. “He had no choice. Your father wouldn’t leave, either, so I knew you were here. He said he’d not go without you.”
Essa looked down at him, and kneeled one last time at Cai’s side. If you looked past the blood, he could have just been sleeping. He looked so young.
They walked hand in hand around the village, but found only corpses.
“We must get away,” Essa said finally. “There’s no one here we can help. The Mercians’ll come back and they’ll kill you and me too if they find us.”
“But how are we going to—” Lark stopped, gesturing around at their ruined home, at the still-smouldering thatch of the smithy, the blackened timbers of the weaving-hall, at the dead. “We’ve got to bury them properly.”
“How can we? Lark, we must go! The Mercians’ll come back through here when they’ve –” How far were Penda’s men going to get, he wondered. Would they fight their way to the coast, as Penda had promised? Would there be anything of the Wolf Folk left? He had to get back to Bedricsworth. He owed Elfgift the news of Cai’s death. He reached out, drew Lark close. “The Mercians’ll come back. They’ll bury everyone properly. They’ve got to clear the place up, or it’ll be no use to them.”
He hoped they were all together, the dead: his father, Hild, Onela, Egric, Cole. There were so many of them. He hoped they were going to the same place, not having to leave each other behind as they had left the living so the Christians could go to heaven or hell, and everyone else to the Hall of Warriors. It’s all the same place, he told himself. It’s all the same. But even so, it would be a long journey through the Land of Mist, across the great expanses of the night, and it would be better to go with friends.
Then Lark said quietly, “We’re never coming back, are we?” The baby was wailing now, and Essa just stood there for a moment, his arm round Lark’s shoulders, not knowing what to say, how to comfort either of them. She was right: her brother was dead, her mother, her grandfather. Hild. How could they stay now? What was there to stay for? Most of the others were all right – Red, Starling, Ariulf, Helith – they would live to rebuild the village, but Essa knew he could not do it with them.
Life would not be so different here – the boys of the Wixna would wear Penda’s rings now, that was all, and they would fight for him instead of the Wolf Folk when the time came. But Essa’s place with the Wixna had died with Hild. He was no longer the boy who had left the village that night, sneaking across the marshes to Penda’s camp on Egric’s orders. He was an atheling
of the house of Ad Gefrin, and there was no need to follow orders any more.
Lark’s eyes were dry, but she was shaking like someone with the palsy. He held out a hand smeared with blood, Cai’s blood, and saw that he was shaking too; he could not keep his fingers still. It would have been easier if she were crying, wailing like the baby. Did she know about him, he wondered. Did she know the truth; that Elfgift would be waiting at Bedricsworth?
Lark shifted the bundle in her arms, “Shhh,” she said. “Shhh.” She turned to Essa. “Where are we going?”
Essa hesitated. Did she know? “We should find the others first,” he said. “Let them know we’re safe.” He paused, not knowing how he’d bear it if she’d known all along, too. “And after that, we’ll go to my mother.”
But Lark just stared at him. “What? But your mother’s— Essa, what are you talking about?”
She had not known, then. Relief coursed through him. It was just Hild, and she’d kept his secret all these years. He wished he could see her one last time. He wished he were nine years old again, sitting in the stable with her, watching Meadowsweet feed the new pups.
“Listen,” he said, “and I’ll tell you.”
They found a horse in the orchard, standing with one leg dangling free of the ground, broken. Essa had to kill it. Lark burst into tears then, as if the dying horse were worse than anything else they’d seen. Essa remembered killing his own horse, and how that still seemed more real, more dreadful than any of the other things he had done that day.
Then they heard a horse whickering from behind the grain mounds. It was Melyor, calm the moment she saw him. She came walking out towards them, the saddle hanging loose from her side.
“Melyor,” said Essa. He pulled Lark to his side, holding her tight. “Oh, Melyor.” He remembered finding Melyor’s stall empty that morning, long ago, wondering if he would ever see her again. The baby stopped crying, and in the sudden quiet, Lark smiled. “You’re bleeding all over me,” she said. “Your shoulder.”
