The bower was curiously still and quiet, lit by one candle set on a pricket by the doorway. It was a lean-to addition to the original hall, and the roof sloped to the rear wall. He heaved a chest across the floor, and with Eglaf’s aid piled it on another against the wall. He scrambled up, leaped, caught a cross-beam and swung. For all his size he was agile as a sailor must be. He hauled himself astride the beam and investigated the rafters.
“Your sire builded over-well,” he told Judith calmly. There was not room for his lusty body to pass between them. “My axe, Eglaf.”
Leaning back, he chopped at the rafter over his head. Dust and soot, woodlice and scared spiders showered down, and the silent earwigs scuttled into the thatch. At the hall door was fierce tumult; he heard the ring of blades and the yells, and knew that the noise he made would never be heard. A faint crackling and the odour of burning straw assailed him as he hacked methodically at the rafter. He could not exert his full strength because of his awkward position and the restricted swing of his arm, and the wood was a stout ash sapling seasoned over many years. He worked steadily, and was yet able to give part of his attention to what went on below.
At Judith’s quiet command the men dragged up benches and chests to make a rough stair to the roof. She had caught her skirts up into her belt, like any peasant wench washing linen by the riverside. One man stationed himself by the curtain and told them how the fight progressed.
“They stand just within the door and hold fast.. . . The thatch is well alight above them, but the timbers have not caught. Sparks and burning straw fall among the Danes. . . . Wow, that was well hit, Edric! . . . He and Cynric hold the door. Leofric thrusts over their shoulders. The Danes have no room to come at them. Old Aldred throws brands from the hearth in their faces as they crowd to reach them. . . . The smoke grows thicker, and Cynric is wounded.”
The smoke indeed grew thicker, coiling among the rafters in evil-smelling wreaths. It filtered along the thatch, catching at Niall's throat and lungs as he laboured. He had severed the rafter above him, and now he was leaning outward, clinging to the beam with one hand and hewing with the other. Time grew dangerously short. The thin blue wisps of smoke made him choke and cough; if they grew much stronger he would be stupefied and fall. Those below were growing anxious, staring up at him in silence. At least his work had not been detected by the enemy, crowding to the fight at the other end of the building.
The wood cracked and shifted. He seized the severed end, wrenched it aside, and tore it free with an effort that almost spilled him from his perch. He dragged it away with a cracking, trailing, entangling mass of the hazel-withes lashed to the rafters to support the thatch, cast it down and scrambled up to stand on the beam. He tore through the foot-thick mass of straw and thrust out head and shoulders. The hall roof was one bright blaze, and the first red threads of flame were crackling down towards him. He drew a deep breath of cleaner air and ducked back into the smoke-filled room, grinning down at their anxious faces. The first man was already on the pile of chests. He dropped astride the beam again and reached down his hand.
“Give your spear to Eglaf, and up!”
He hoisted him up and through. His kicking legs vanished. The next man he bade stay on the roof while they passed out the spears and dropped them to the first out. Then it was Judith’s turn, and one by one the others were boosted through the ragged hole in the thatching. The smoke swirled about them, and sparks thickened to a fiery hailstorm as the fire strode down the roof. Niall pushed through the hole barely in time, choking with smoke and blinded with tears. The straw was flaring behind him as he rolled feet-first over the eaves and tumbled into his men’s ready arms. There was none to see, none to raise a cry, and the clang of battle had drowned all sound of their escape.
He won back his breath, wiped his streaming eyes, clutched his axe and saw that all had their weapons. They glanced at each other by the fire’s blood-red glare.
“Hold on!” said Judith quickly, and beckoned the two youngest lads. “Penda, Wilfrid, with me! We will loose the horses and drive them at their backs, Niall.”
Niall nodded, and led his remaining seven at a run left-handed round the building and to the Danes’ flank. The night was a ruddy nightmare of fire and fighting and wild shouting, pierced through and through by women’s wailing, children’s cries and the din of terrified beasts. The fight was locked about the doorway, the roof blazed over it, thatch consumed and timbers crackling, black against the glare. Niall could not see his comrades for the press, nor his kinsmen Rorik and Eymund, but he could hear the defiant, “Out! Out!” Brands hurtled like comets among the cursing attackers.
Niall raised one great yell, set his teeth against his heathen blood-kin and charged their unguarded backs, his axe falling. A helmet and half the head inside it lifted like a casket-lid, the next stroke crunched a bare nape, the third half-severed a spurting shoulder. Speed, weight and sheer surprise carried him and his seven into the struggle’s heart at the first impact, in the flying wedge that won so many battles. Leofric’s yell answered Niall's, and his thrust was sped as Rorik’s men reeled from the unexpected blow. They poured from the doorway in a compact missile of flesh and steel. As they cleared it half a dozen squealing ponies, maddened by the uproar and the blaze and spear-jabs from behind, burst into the pirates’ confused ranks rearing, kicking and plunging in frenzy. Before they could rally Niall had cloven through to Leofric, and they were all running for the gate and safety. Some of the captive women and youngsters, snatching their chance, broke free and joined them, and they pelted across the bridge and up the hill towards the woods without a Dane to stand in their way.
9
Once under cover of the trees they stopped running and silently gathered together in a panting throng, looking down at the village. The hall flamed crimson and yellow, white smoke rolled away on the wind and blew up the valley in ragged wisps, and the glare reddened the grey fields and streaked the river with lurid light. Men swarmed to loot it before it burned. Others were running about the enclosure, and a cluster stood about the gate, but no pursuit had yet started.
Niall leaned against a tree and passed a hand over his sweating face. His front hair broke away crisply, brittle from singeing, as he touched it. Around him men gasped for breath, tied up wounds, stared dry-eyed and bitter at their homes. A child sniffled quietly, stifling sobs, and a man called down Heaven’s curses on the heathen in a flat, lifeless voice.
“Where is their ship?” Edric demanded harshly, from higher up the hill. There was a sudden surge of movement; from where he stood the sea could be seen, blank and empty as it had been when Niall stood by the shore.
“They came down the valley,” said Niall, “Through the woods, not by sea.”
“Through the woods? But how in God’s Name could they find the way?”
They muttered and grunted, but there was no answering that.
“If they have no ship there is a chance to rescue our folk!” Cynric said quickly.
“We will need help,” Leofric decided. He had his arm round his young wife, so that they made a double black shadow under the trees. “Our neighbours—Sigebert and Ulnoth—or if we can find Odda in time-—come!”
“No sense in standing here and cursing Danes,” Edric grunted, and they stumbled away along the hillside, feeling their way as best they could over the rough ground between the trees and thickets. The moon gave them light, and the leafless trees blocked little of it, but the slope was steep, the earth slippery and sodden with rain, and now the fight was over they were bone-weary and sick with sorrow and shame and bitter anger.
Cynric had been wounded in the thigh, though not gravely, and limped along leaning on Edric’s shoulder, with Judith at his other side. Niall fell in beside Leofric, and the company straggled out behind them, grim and wretched. Still there was neither sight nor sound of pursuit; no doubt the Danes had occupation enough to last them until daylight. Niall thought of the women in their hands, of the husbands and father
s around him who could be thinking of naught else as they turned their backs on their loves, and his last remorse for what he had done left him.
They reached the path that angled back and forth up the hill to the moor, and could move more easily. Leofric roused himself to call his folk together and issue orders.
“Aldred, Eowils, help the boys drive the sheep into the moor. Wilfrid, Osbert, go with all speed to my Lady’s father Ulnoth and beg his aid. The rest of us will get the women and children to Sigebert’s steading and win their aid.”
The runners were off on the word. “Best way,” Edric grunted. ‘‘We can be back with daylight.” He glanced up at the moon, already past the zenith. Four hours or so of darkness remained for them.
They herded the women and children forward. Leofric drew aside to see them pass, and as they did so called off half a dozen men to join him. They gathered together in the moonlight, waiting to make a rear-guard, and Niall waited with them, leaning on his captured axe.
Slowly they clambered up the hill. Once or twice they blundered from the tortuous path; it was hard to distinguish the turns under the trees. Elfwyn stumbled more and more often, gasping for breath and clinging to her husband in the steeper parts. Leofric had had more than sufficient, and Niall came to her other side and set his long arm round her. She was tense and trembling in his hold, and he could feel the effort every step cost her. Then she slipped, stifled a cry, and would have fallen headlong had he not caught her. The rear-guard almost overran them, and stopped helplessly, muttering together. Niall uttered an impatient little grunt, shoved his axe under the back of his belt, set one arm under her shoulders and the other beneath her knees and swung her up into his arms.
“Go on!” he bade them curtly.
They followed the rest on and up. The stream, augmented by rain, worried noisily at the rocks. Wet brush reached for them and soaked them to the skin. Elfwyn silently rested her head against Niall's shoulder. She was shivering, and her breath came fast and jerkily. An ugly fear nagged at him, but he thrust it aside. When they gained the moor he could give her into the women’s care. Powerful as he was, she made a heavy burden over so steep and rough a track, and as the trees began to straggle and he threaded behind Leofric along one of the twisting sheep-paths he slowed more and more. Leofric was reeling too, on the point of exhaustion. Where the ground became more open he halted to rest, setting Elfwyn down gently on a convenient boulder. The girl huddled together, and over her bowed head he and Leofric exchanged apprehensive glances.
“Better call back the women,” Niall advised quietly, and then, aware of encompassing silence, stared about him in the shifting tracery of moonlight and tree-shadows for the rear-guard. His heart jolted uncomfortably. They were alone. Out of so many meandering sheep-paths the men had chosen another, and had passed them unseeing among the rocks and thickets. He stooped quickly and lifted the girl to her feet. She clutched at his arm and stifled a cry that reached them as a gasp.
“Elfwyn! Elfwyn! Is—is it—?”
“Your son—I think,” she answered quite calmly.
“But it is too soon—a month too soon—”
“There is no arguing with a baby,” said Niall grimly, and gathered her up again. “Lead on.”
The toiled up the last steep slope. Haste was impossible. Niall had to take each step with separate care for the placing of his feet, with rocks and bramble and clinging bilberry to trip him. If he fell he would go down upon the girl, and he climbed more and more slowly, sweating and scared, while Leofric would go forward a few steps and then hover anxiously as he caught up. They were falling further and further behind their companions, and at last Leofric, risking the danger that the Danes might be beating the woods below, shouted. The trees muffled his voice, and there was no answer. He waited, and yelled again. Niall joined to his a voice trained to surmount tempests, and as they stopped to listen they heard a faint shout behind them, at the hill’s foot.
“Are they following?” Niall asked sharply.
“God forbid it!” he whispered, and they held their breath. They could hear nothing but the stream’s laughter, but they dared shout no more. They turned again to the climb.
“The others will miss us and come back,” Leofric said hoarsely. “Elfwyn—”
She raised her head from Niall’s shoulder and laughed shakily. “Your son is in haste!” she said. But Niall felt the tenseness assail her at intervals, and every time she closed her hold on his arm until her nails bit through his sleeve. Then she gasped, and a gush of warm fluid soaked her skirts. He stumbled and almost fell, recovered with a grunt of effort, and turned imperatively on Leofric.
“Go as fast as you can to bring back help!” he ordered sharply. “I will follow with your Lady, but the child is being born!”
“Not—not immediately,” said Elfwyn, with a ghostly chuckle.
“But you do not know the way—you will lose yourself with Elfwyn—and how should we find you then in time?”
After a moment’s thought, Niall nodded agreement. Their best hope was that they would be missed, but he realized clearly that in that straggling mass of fugitives wandering in the night through woods and moors, their absence might well go unobserved until dawn. Edric and Cynric would believe them with the rear-guard, who would suppose they had gone ahead to set Elfwyn with the other women. They had to go on, as far from the village as they could. Leofric led on, stumbling with weakness. Niall tightened his aching arms on the girl. A tiny, half-smothered whimper stabbed him with pity and dread, and brought Leofric back to his side, exclaiming distractedly. Elfwyn gasped something in reassurance, clutching fast. Then she pressed her face into his tunic, rigid and shuddering. Niall tried to spare her jolts and stumbles, but he was tiring fast and the track grew worse as it jerked itself up the last steeps to the moor.
Before the last roof-like pitch on the edge of the trees he was forced to halt again, his heart pounding at his ribs with thundering mallet-blows and his pulse roaring in his ears. He laid the girl down on the leaf-mould, her head on her husband’s knees, and sank down dizzily beside her, his head in his hands, his chest labouring for air. As the tumult within him gradually quieted he became aware that Leofric was trying to assure his wife that help would soon reach them, while she in her turn attempted to persuade him that all was well and the child not yet come to birthing. That, he told himself, was true love between man and woman; not self-seeking, not a mere exchange of pleasure, but each possessed with concern for the other.
When he lifted his head the low voices stopped, and Elfwyn reached out a hand and laid it on his knee.
“Oh, Niall, it is—a pity that there are two of us—for you to carry,” she jested jerkily. He caught the hand in his own.
“You are a very brave lady,” he said, in honest respect.
“I must match my husband—for my son.” Her fingers closed convulsively. They were wet with sweat and yet cold.
“You shame us,” said Leofric hoarsely, and bent to kiss her. Niall turned his head away. An owl hooted among the trees, quite close, and lower down the wood another answered. The trees whispered and rustled all about them. A fox barked, somewhere on the moor, and farther off a wolf’s wavering howl lifted the hair on his nape. Snuffling grunts and a patter of small hooves warned him of a boar near at hand, and furtive tiny life stirred and squeaked everywhere. He looked up at the stars peering between the bare twigs. Another three hours would see dawn upon them.
“Niall,” said Leofric in a low voice, “I have not thanked you—I cannot—”
“Save your breath. You began it when you spared me. And now I think on it, I have never been able to guess why.”
“Why? Oh, I liked your boldness.”
Niall felt himself redden in the darkness. To cover it he stood up, stretched his cramped arms and squared his shoulders. Some time during that hectic night the too-small tunic had split down the back, granting him freedom of movement at the cost of a tendency to slide over his arms. He hitched it u
p and bent to lift Elfwyn again, but as he slipped his arm under her shoulders she gasped and stiffened, throwing her head back against Leofric’s breast. He caught his breath and stared wretchedly down at her and up at Niall. “Oh God, if only Hild were here!” he exclaimed.
Niall set his teeth and took her up once more. “Pay no heed,” she whispered in his ear, and clung to his arm with one hand. He braced himself for the worst part of the ascent, sidelong up the hill by a narrow, crooked path, all irregularly-tilted, broken stones. Elfwyn’s pains were coming closer and more sharply, and at every spasm her knees jerked and her whole body heaved in his hold. It was hard to see the path, even with Leofric to lead him. Then a stone shifted under his foot and he lost his balance. With a desperate effort he wrenched himself sideways to take the brunt of the fall, and managed to throw himself uphill, coming down among the bushes with the girl uppermost. A cry was jolted out of her by the impact, and Leofric came stumbling back, cursing and praying under his breath, to pull her clear with his sound arm. Niall rolled over, most of the wind jarred out of him by the rocks under the gorse, and tore free of the spines that clutched him. He heaved himself to his feet and then squatted on his heels beside Leofric. Another pang took the girl, and she writhed.
“She can go no further,” he declared bluntly to the husband.
He nodded. That was plain. Niall scouted briefly, and carried her off the path to a sheltered hollow surrounded by gorse-thickets, where he laid her under a stunted tree whose dead leaves slightly mitigated the earth’s rockiness. Both men stripped off their tunics to lay between her and the damp ground. Niall had to help Leofric, hampered by his useless arm, and to settle his sling for him again.
The Price of Blood Page 13
