Niall stared into the fire, seeing again the bodies he had laid in the wet earth. “I said it was not my quarrel,” he explained wearily. “I meant to claim a kinsman’s aid and keep my hands clean of his works and his warfare. Now I have seen what I would have called kin!”
“Since he is—” Leofric began.
Sudden passion sparked in Niall, and he twisted up onto his knees, striking with one hand at the tree’s rough bark. “A Christian claim kinship with Ubba’s captain?” he cried furiously. You should put your sword through me here and now!”
We are not heathens,” Leofric curtly refused.
"Then put a weapon in my hand and set me in the forefront of your battle!”
“Dare you pretend you would fight your own kin?” sneered Edric.
“I disown that kinship!” Then the fire died in him; sank to ashes and was gone like flame in dead grass. He dropped back against the tree and bowed his head. “Of course you cannot believe me,” he muttered dully.
“Of course!” Edric agreed with a snap of teeth. “And I thought better of your wit than to try us with such a tale!”
“Make fast,” Leofric nodded to the hovering Eglaf. He and a comrade fell upon Niall and roped his ankles, bound his wrists together in front of him and his arms to his sides so that he could not reach the knots with his teeth, and then made yet more sure by tying him to the tree. The fire was banked with turf, and the Englishmen rolled up about it in their cloaks. One man remained awake, sitting on a rock. Now and again he got up and prowled about, from the camp to the horses and back.
Niall leaned against the tree and stared blindly into the fire. He could have wriggled down in his bonds to lie on his back, but sleep was far from him, and if he found it he knew it would be haunted by nightmares of the kind that filled his waking mind. He had known how Ubba made war as long as he could remember. He had heard warriors boasting about Waterford as a child, shuddered with the monks over tales of slaughter and martyrdom, bargained in Northern ports with Viking captains and known he was paid in looted goods. Now he had seen with his own eyes, and the reality scalded his soul with shame and guilt.
He had claimed that this was no quarrel of his. He had imagined that he, the cuckoo child despised alike by his Irish and Norse kin, could reconcile his two conflicting loyalties by evading both, sailing south beyond their demands. Now they had entrapped him, and he saw plainly that he had come by his deserts.
He was a fool and a coward and a cheat, who had prided himself on sense and courage and honesty.
Niall had held his faith lightly enough since he revolted from the monastery and fled to sea, reckoning it half-ruefully as a handicap to a seaman, but it was yet as much a part of him as his blood and bones. He saw very clearly that now, when it was already too late, he must choose between kin and faith, and that a Christian had no choice. He must go before Odda and submit to his judgement, either atoning with his life for his folly and cowardice and dishonesty, or striking with him for Wessex and Christian faith and for the butchered innocents below.
The decision eased him. He had sat brooding against the tree for a long time; the guard had twice been changed, the fire had dwindled to a red eye winking as the wind stirred, the moon had mounted to shine cold and white over the leafless trees. He sagged down against the rope in an uneasy doze. Twice he jerked awake as it dragged at his chest, and at length he wriggled into the easiest position he could find, his head on a projecting root, and fell into comfortless sleep.
A faint yell woke him. He jerked up and was pulled back by the rope, so that he bumped his head against the trunk and came to complete awareness. Someone was calling from above, crashing down through the woods, and about him men were casting off cloaks, grabbing weapons and scrambling to their feet. A black body loomed over Niall, and a long silver glimmer against his breast informed him that Eglaf was already attending to his duty. Then the voice shouted from quite close, sharp and eager.
“The beacon—Odda’s beacon!”
Someone kicked the fire to life and cast a handful of dead twigs upon it. The swift flare lighted tense faces and drawn blades. A man dropped panting between the trees and ran to Leofric.
“The beacon is burning on Quantock! The Danes are landing!”
“Saddle up!”
Before the brief blaze had begun to dwindle the packs had been strapped on the ponies and the camp was cleared. Two men released Niall while Eglaf stood by, his spear-arm drawn back for a lunge. The giant came stiffly to his feet and stretched his cramped muscles. He might have thrown himself into the bushes and made a run for freedom, but that way was no longer open to him. He submitted silently as he was tethered again to the saddle, his decision of last night hardened into resolution. They started up the hill, leading the horses.
The moon gave good light, and on the crest they all stared eastward at the red flare far away in the windy dark. It must have been long lighted, for the first tall yellow blaze had died to the scarlet of a forge-fire under strong draught. Leofric grunted in his throat and mounted. Niall, forewarned this time, gripped the stirrup-leather. Morning would be journey’s end for him, but he was ready, and his regret was that he could not die fighting to avenge the baby tossed on the spear, the child dashed against the doorpost and the raped and murdered women. He had no one to weep for him, no one who would even wonder what had befallen him when he dropped out of life like a stone into deep water.
The moon was dropping behind the hills at their backs when dawn caught up with it, a thin grey light rising where that last red glow of the beacon waned in ashes. Slowly it put out the stars, and the clouds coloured in red and purple streaks along their lower edges. The dead grey and black hills turned green and brown, and a first lark mounted the new day in shrill exultation.
They moved downhill into dank blackness of woodland, a rough track under their feet. Dawn came in crimson and purple splendour, flaring in wide stripes across the paling sky. They faded to rose and gold as the sun came up and then dimmed to grey, darkening in the west with promise of rain. The track began to climb, and the brothers dismounted to ease the tired horses.
The lame pony lagged more and more, and presently Leofric halted the troop and gathered some of the men about it. After a brief discussion they divided its load among the others and turned it to forage for itself. They pushed on, their driving urgency fiercer for every mile they covered. Then the trees straggled and thinned, and they were climbing the last whale’s back of the hills where a few hours ago the beacon had blazed to summon them.
On the top they paused, the damp wind tugging at hair and cloaks, grey sky all about them and at their feet the land and water. On the left hand the Severn Sea lay grey and cold, with the hills of Wales lifting blue beyond; on the right rolling wooded hills and below them a twisting river estuary with the tide making over flats and mudbanks, and the great black and leaden expanse of marsh and alder-thicket reaching on its further side to another line of grey hills. Niall saw it all in one swift look, and then shaded his eyes to peer more closely at the narrow black shapes like long-legged water-beetles creeping up the winding river in line ahead.
He drew sharp breath, his heart suddenly thumping. Around him the Englishmen stared in deadly, bitter silence as Ubba’s host rowed up the Parrett River to pierce the last barrier Wessex could oppose to them. He counted the ships, cautiously working up the unfamiliar river with the tide. Twenty-three; that meant something over two thousand warriors, arrogantly sure of conquest. He looked for Odda of Devon, and glimpsed movement among the trees lower down the slope. A very grim smile twisted his mouth.
Leofric came round the horse’s head, loosed the thong, and tossed it to a couple of his men. Niall stood still as they tied his wrists together, looking out over their heads at the sea he would never sail again and wondering if the monks and his Irish kin had been right about his inevitable damnation as a child of heathen devils. He shrugged slightly; he would soon know. Death came to all men. He only wished for a weapo
n in his hand and a chance to die killing Danes who tossed babies on spears.
“Down, you!” Leofric snarled, thrusting at him, and they were all running down the hill, the horses scuttering along among them. Niall’s long legs kept pace, though his bound hands made him awkward; at least they had not tied them behind him. Someone shouted a challenge as they reached the trees, and was answered by Leofric; then they were in the wood, crowded with waiting men who peered between the leafless boughs at the ships rowing steadily with the tide, and fondled their weapons, and bleakly waited. The newcomers pushed among the crowds in a compact body, Niall in their midst so that he was not seen to be a prisoner. The horses had disappeared, left somewhere on the outskirts of the wood.
The sun had blinked out between the clouds when they came down to open ground, a rough slope of pasture running down to level ground by the river. The ships were nearer now, sharp and clear against the sunlit water. Niall could distinguish dragon’s heads, painted shields slung along the gunwales, the gleam of helmets and mail and the bright cloaks of lookouts and helmsmen. Every eye was on them. Lurking among the undergrowth and bushes the Englishmen waited, watching tensely to see what Ubba would do. The flat ground in the river’s loop was a likely choice for his base camp. Would he beach his longships there, or probe further into the wilderness of marshes? Niall realized what was in Odda’s mind, and nodded approval; Odda knew where his only chance lay.
Someone knew Leofric and greeted him by name. He waved an acknowledgement and called, “Odda?” The other pointed, and they threaded a way between men and trees, up a shallow slope to the top of a slight ridge. There, under a crooked oak tree, a little group of men was standing, intent on the ships moving below. Their once-fine clothes were worn and fouled, even ragged, from months of ill-usage, but their battle-gear showed their quality. They were the noblemen of Devon. Niall, looking curiously over their hard faces, sought to pick out Odda for himself. His choice fell on a burly veteran with a formidable eye and a humorous mouth; a captain, he reckoned, whom it would be pride to follow.
He had guessed right; Leofric had gone forward, and fallen on one knee.
“Well met, Leofric! And no more than in time for the fighting!” the Ealdorman greeted him, his deep confident voice reaching all there. “Take your folk to Edwin on the left—”
Niall shouldered between Edric and Cynric; he had done with being herded hither and thither like a sheep. Leofric leaped up, but Niall was already beside him, towering above him and Odda too. The Ealdorman’s momentary bewilderment speedily yielded to wrath.
“Who—”
"I am Niall Egil’s son out of Waterford in Erin.”
Sheer outrage paralysed Odda’s tongue for a moment. “A Dane?” he spluttered.
“Norse.”
Odda did not concern himself with such finer distinctions; to him anything on two legs that followed Ubba was either Dane or devil. Neither did the nobles of Devon trouble; they were grabbing at their hilts and crowding forward to hack him into gobbets as he stood. Odda, collecting himself, held them back with a quick swing of one arm, and turned on Leofric. “I had not thought that any man of Wessex would trouble to take a Dane prisoner!”
“Leofric reckoned to let you have my hanging.”
“Wasting my time, but no more than we need to find a stout enough tree!”
“Before you hang me,” Niall requested mildly, “grant me a Christian priest to shrive me.”
He would have astounded them less by growing hooves, horns and tail and vanishing into the ground amid smoke and stink of brimstone. Devon noblemen gaped in goggle-eyed amazement, their weapons drooping from their hands. Odda stared at Leofric, his whole face a startled question. The Thane nodded.
“He has claimed from the first to be a Christian. His ship was wrecked in the storm the day before Ubba passed, and he alone cast up alive. And he denies that he is Ubba’s man.”
“A liar, and mad at that!” Odda pronounced flatly. He looked Niall over from bare toes to black mane, scowling murderously. “Who ever heard of a Christian Dane?”
“You deny me a priest at peril of your own soul,” Niall calmly reminded him.
Odda pushed his helmet back from his brow so that he might scratch his head, and surveyed him again. Then he jerked his head at one of his companions and said, “Father Oswald!” The man pushed out of the tightening circle, and he glared at Niall in exasperated unbelief. “There never was a Christian Dane!” he stated. “Butchers, ravishers, forsworn liars all!”
“I am a peaceful trader, bound for Spain before the storm overcame us.”
“A trader? Oh!” That meant more to him than it had to Leofric; the Ealdorman of Devon must know something of trading customs. “Claim no more than is true, for we can test it. You are Christian, not merely prime-signed?”
“Yes.”
“How long since you were baptised?”
“Three and twenty years,” Niall answered, smiling a little. Odda’s eyebrows shot up towards the helmet’s rim, but at that moment a long gaunt man in a dark tunic, swinging a heavy axe, pushed into the ring and glared at Niall under a tangle of wolf-grey hair. Odda grunted in relief. “Here, Father Oswald! Test if this man be Christian!”
So even priests in Wessex took up arms against the heathen invaders and accounted it virtue. From the gloomy menace in his eye, Father Oswald seemed to reckon the secular function the more appropriate here; he hefted his axe and measured Niall more like an executioner assessing his victim than a priest his penitent. Niall, with grim humour, realized that there would be small comfort in making his last confession to this spiritual comforter. Father Oswald grounded his axe, clasped both hands on its shaft, and observed to all present, “Paternoster and Credo will suffice to prove him a liar.”
But Niall could repeat both without faltering in Latin and interpret them in his own tongue, better indeed than Father Oswald, whose scanty Latin creaked like a rusty hinge. Niall, whose own Latin was kept polished by much usage in the ports of the Middle Sea, considerately helped him out where it was necessary, a courtesy that was not kindly received. Spurred by his first failure, the priest catechized him ferociously on theological doctrine but found his defences impregnable, and at last acknowledged defeat when Niall had proved his intimate knowledge of the situation, routine, history and privileges of the monastery that had tried to breed him.
“The man is tainted with the Celtic heresy,” he pronounced sourly, “but he was certainly bred a Christian in an Irish abbey as he claims, however far sunken he is now in apostasy.”
Odda grunted absently, his eyes elsewhere. At first all had listened attentively, but a theological disputation carried on half in an unknown tongue speedily loses interest, and men’s attention was centred on the Danes below. Niall had watched over shorter men’s heads even as he submitted to interrogation, most of his mind on Ubba’s doings.
That great captain had recognized the possibilities of that loop of the Parrett River at first sight, and the first four ships had already nosed in, the oars had swung inboard as the keels grounded, and the oarsmen had sprung over the gunwales into the shallows and manhandled them up the marshy shore. Their crews were swarming in apparent confusion over the flat, but Niall appreciated the orderly purpose behind their moves. Some to scout forward for timber to make defences, food to feed the host, horses to carry them, a way up the river to the English stronghold in the marshes, while others marked out the camp and helped the later arrivals. Other ships were being beached, coming forward in turn. Odda would launch his attack in a few moments now, surprising the host half ashore and half afloat.
"When the next ship touches! Make ready!” said Odda’s deep voice, clear and steady, and he stepped forward a pace or two free of the trees that all might see him, his sword swinging up. The twelfth ship checked in the shallows, the oars lifting as one.
“What of this Christian Dane?” someone asked quickly.
“Knock him on the head and have done!” he answered i
mpatiently, and his sword swept a great arc as the crew below splashed overboard. “Now!”
A great roar followed him down the hillside, and the wood hurled out yelling men. “Wessex and Christian faith! Out, out!”
Niall whirled under Eglaf’s eager spear, held back so long. He ducked and lunged in one movement, and the blade flashed harmlessly over his head as he threw himself under it. His shoulder thudded into the man’s midriff with all his willing weight behind it, hurling him bodily under a bush with the wind beaten out of him and six feet four of Irish Dane atop of him to ensure that he did not easily regain it. There was none to mark or care for the two sprawled among the undergrowth as feet pounded past, the men of Wessex hastening to be at Danish throats.
Niall sat up astride Eglaf’s belly and snatched the dagger from his waist with both hands, giving thanks again that they were not tied behind him. He set a knee on either arm of his prisoner and then gripped the haft between his strong teeth, biting down hard on the sweat-salted wood, worked a turn of the thong over its keen point and sawed at it until it parted. He jerked his hands free, grinned down at the gasping blue face defying the knife, and quickly replaced it in its sheath before he jumped up.
“Lend me your spear, comrade,” he said cheerfully, appropriating it from the midst of an elder bush, and pelted down the hill amid the rearmost to find a Dane or two for himself.
At the first alarm the Danes had fallen back upon their ships. Odda had placed his charge well. The men of Devon swept into the loop of the river, overrunning the scattered Danes, until they crashed into the hastily-formed ranks of warriors and locked fast in a raging struggle. Niall, whose long legs carried him faster than most downhill, was in the midst of them, and a blind, mad, reeling pack they were, wedged so fast that they could not lift an arm and heaving forward wild for blood. Their feet churned the wet turf to greasy mud, but though they slipped and slid, they could not fall. Over the sea of heads Niall saw the bright steel flashing and flickering, smelled warm blood over the sharper scents of trodden grass and tidal mud, and heard the clang of battle and the wordless roaring of the two hosts.
The Price of Blood Page 6
