Avelynn: The Edge of Faith

by Marissa Campbell

  “Matters of witchcraft are of considerable concern to me. But from your own admission, you have no proof of her involvement in these events.”

  “Avelynn gains nothing in the telling. Her only purpose is to protect you from a power-hungry wench,” Angharad pressed.

  Gwgon spared his sister a warning scowl and locked his arms across his chest. It would be an uphill battle convincing him of my point of view, but I plodded ahead. “One evening, I left the hall seeking my bed. I spied Marared walking with great purpose to your private chambers. When the door opened, Sigy answered. The two women had a damning conversation.”

  “Did anyone else overhear this?” Gwgon’s tone betrayed impatience.

  Angharad’s exasperated puff of air caught us both short. “For heaven’s sakes, brother, hear the woman’s story before you dissect and pick it apart. There is more. Please continue, Avelynn.”

  “In the course of the conversation, I overheard Marared refuse to marry you.”

  “Most women do not take kindly to others meddling in their futures, but that is no ground for your charges. They come around and accept their position in time.”

  I shook my head. “It was more the threat to your life that I took notice of.”

  That caught his attention.

  “Sigy implied that Marared need not worry about sharing your bed for long, since kings often die young. She mentioned the threat of the coming battle, and the possibility of your death.”

  “While crass, I can hardly argue with her logic, however insensitive to my well-being.” His lips thinned.

  “It was more the suggestion of poison to hasten the process that concerned me.” I set my hands in my lap, letting him absorb my words.

  He blinked at my admission. “You have no other witnesses?”

  “No.”

  “And you believe this?” He turned to Angharad.

  “I believe Avelynn was poisoned, and if Marared was responsible, you are in great danger.” She reached out and clasped his hands. “Avelynn has nothing to gain by warning you. The wedding cannot proceed.”

  “I thank you for your concern.” He stood.

  “Gwgon—”

  He held up his hand to his sister. “I have welcomed Avelynn to my court and given her clemency and sanctuary because of your friendship, but this charge stretches my patience. I have worked diligently to create a strong alliance with the house of Dyfed and will not allow conjecture and supposition to undermine it. I demand you put these rumors to rest.” He opened the door, showing us out. Angharad crossed her legs and arms and remained seated. He frowned but turned his attention back to me. “If anyone should be concerned about charges of witchcraft, it is you, lady. I suggest you tread carefully. You would be wise to hold onto the friends you have while you are still in our land.” He shut the door behind me.

  The looming darkness closed in. Its slimy tendrils lapped at my heels. I left brother and sister to fight it out amongst themselves.

  With the army mobilizing, I tried to keep my mind and body busy. I joined the other women and helped load provisions onto waiting carts, but the distraction proved ineffective. Gwgon’s warning warped and spun in my mind. I had only one friend in Wales, and how long would Angharad be able to support me? Once my identity and the charges against me became common knowledge, she would have to distance herself or risk censure by association. No one wanted to be friends with a suspected witch.

  Angharad presented me with a young mare, sprightly and good tempered, and when the order came to march, I rode at Alrik’s side. The Vikings once again split into two groups. Alrik would never leave Raven’s Blood moored in a Welsh bay—Vikings needed their ships nearby. In a hostile land, a secondary plan was essential. Alrik split the men evenly, and Tollak, guided by Gwgon’s chamberlain, sailed the ship back down the River Tywi. They would sail around the coast and meet us in Llanbadarn.

  Given the mass of bodies and materials to move, we made progress at a steady but slow pace. The army spent half the morning ferrying their supplies across the river, and the remainder of the day saw us trekking through rolling countryside, forever going up and barely coming down.

  For the most part, Gwgon or Hyffaid rode with their men at the head of the pack, the Vikings marching abreast, but as the day grew long, the path grew narrower, and by mid-afternoon much of the army stretched into a long, ambling line. The Vikings remained at the front, alongside Hyffaid’s personal guard. The man, Baroc, led a small band of Welshmen, most likely the same group that had followed Raven’s Blood to Dinefwr.

  I hadn’t thought anything of our position until, as the day wore on, it became strikingly clear that Alrik and his men led the march. Baroc hung back, his group several breadths behind. Stillness filled the air. Birds arrested their song. Creatures disappeared into the shadows. A cold chill washed over me. A vision, terrifying in its clarity, descended. A thundering sound, as if a thousand wings beat in time, echoed in my mind. Valkyries soared through the air, ravens at their side. Around me, men lay on the ground. Arrows rained down from the canopy. Blood drew the beasts. Wolves circled.

  “Alrik.” My voice croaked, drawing me back to the march. I forced my horse to a stop. “Something’s wrong.”

  Alrik surveyed the forest and held up a closed fist. His men halted. He grabbed my reins, and we dismounted.

  “Take the beasts.” Alrik motioned to one of his men, who took the leads and disappeared down the trodden path, past Baroc and back toward the main group. All around me, grips on swords tightened.

  “Why have you stopped?” Baroc stormed forward. “Keep moving.”

  Alrik growled. “I advise you to step back.”

  Baroc ignored the barriers of personal space. “Keep moving.”

  Animosity drove in waves off of the Vikings.

  “Perhaps I misread the situation.” I appealed to Alrik.

  “No. I am sure you did not.” He turned to Baroc. “Where is your king? Why does he not travel with us?”

  Vikings fanned out, edging closer to the treeline.

  Baroc waved at his men. The Welsh marched forward, shields raised. Hostile glances passed between Baroc’s men and the Viking warriors. “The path is narrow. I advised him to stay with Gwgon.”

  Alrik unsheathed his sword. All twenty Viking warriors followed suit. “Surely there is room for one more horse. Unless you received word of the gutless dogs who have been launching attacks throughout Seisyllwg. Were you hoping they would bite, and we would be the ones fighting in the face of your cowardice?”

  “You have no right to be here, heathen. My uncle may trust your kind, but I do not. No one here would miss a few pagan roaches if Rhodri’s men squashed you one by one.”

  An arrow whizzed through the air. It caught one of Baroc’s men clean through the throat. He dropped to his knees and landed face first on the grass. Men scattered. Alrik grabbed my arm and hauled me behind a rock. “Stay here.” Another shot rang through the trees. I heard the grunt before I saw its impact. A Viking slumped to the ground; an arrow embedded in the blue of his eye.

  “Stay with her.” Alrik laid a hand on Cormac’s shoulder and then dove into the cover of trees.

  Cormac squatted to my right, ensconced behind a fallen oak. He nocked his own arrow and studied the shadows. I held my sword tight to my chest. What good was steel against a bow? Vikings skulked deeper into the woods. Where were Baroc’s men? I dared a glance behind me, catching the tail end of the Welshmen retreating. The bastards left the Vikings to hold the road. Thuds and groans filtered through the woods, chasing the chaos around me. I needed to do something.

  “Stay still.” Cormac must have sensed my movement.

  “I can help.” I hissed.

  “We’ve done this many times. I know where our men are. You would only put yourself in danger.”

  I wanted to prove him wrong, but for once, I listened. To act would be reckless. Muirgen’s warning from a lifetime ago came, unbidden. A gentle breeze blew, undeterred by the st
orm of violence. An indomitable ant continued its Herculean climb on the rock’s broad surface. All around us, life carried on. Nature turned a blind eye to our plight. From dust to dust. The lives of these men fighting around me had no impact on the group assembled in Wales. They were hired hands; they had no value here. Baroc had made that perfectly clear. But to their families and friends, here and back home in Sweden, their death would not go unmourned. To some, we mattered. I searched the trees in vain for Alrik. Sounds of struggle echoed through the clearing, screams of battle frenzy and howls of victory merged with the shrieks and whimpers of dying men.

  Cormac shuffled to my side, arrow at the ready. “I admire your bravery. The men think of you as a good luck charm.”

  I frowned, taking in the dead.

  “It would have been worse if you hadn’t halted our advance. The men will only respect you more after this day.” Cormac cocked his head above the rock and stood.

  “What are you doing?” I yanked on his trousers, trying to pull him back down but noticed men returning to the path.

  Hushed whispers followed as each man in turn nodded to me. My heart lodged in my throat. Where was Alrik?

  I started forward, reaching the edge of the treeline before stopping. A Viking stood impaled before me. An arrow pierced the shield, ripped through the wood, and lanced flesh beyond chainmail and leather. The deadly point came to rest, lodging in the trunk of a tree. I’d never seen an arrow capable of that much force. What had we gotten ourselves into?

  Alrik strode into the clearing, his face and chest covered in blood.

  I ran to him. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

  “It is not my blood, hjartað.” He kissed the top of my head.

  Cormac and another Viking approached Alrik, a young man supported between them. His feet dragged uselessly through the short grass.

  “A scratch,” the injured man said.

  Alrik smiled. “You fought well today, Hengest.”

  “Thank you, Lord.”

  Cormac eased Hengest down, leaning his back against a tree. Several men approached and offered Hengest wine, laughing and toasting his prowess. A grey pallor tinged his face; his breath labored.

  “How many were there?” I asked.

  Alrik wiped the blade of his axe. “Three archers and a few swordsmen. All dead.”

  Cormac addressed Alrik. “There must be recompense.”

  “There will be.” Alrik took in the dead, including Hengest, who had taken his last breath.

  “Baroc needs to pay,” Cormac said.

  Alrik laid his hand on Cormac’s shoulder. “He will.”

  The Vikings stormed back to the halted army. They pushed their way to where Hyffaid and Gwgon stood.

  “Where is your man Baroc?” Alrik hadn’t bothered to wipe the dried blood from his face or hair.

  Baroc stepped forward. “I’m here, Viking.”

  “You left the field. Four of my men lie dead.”

  “My duty is to my king. My men rushed back to protect our—”

  Alrik moved fast. Baroc’s sword fell to the ground, still gripped in his hand. Baroc’s cry pierced the forest, and he dropped to a knee. Blood spurted from the stub of his wrist, and he wrapped his cloak around the wound.

  Hyffaid unsheathed his sword. “You dare raise steel against my own blood.”

  Welshmen pressed forward. Vikings, high from battle, banged the steel of their blades on the iron bosses of their shields.

  On impulse, I scanned the sky, expecting to see the Maidens of Odin swooping down, ready to take the dead to feast in Valhalla. Only sixteen Vikings remained after that attack, and while I knew they could hold their own for a time, they were outnumbered, with no means of escape. None of us knew the land, and Raven’s Blood sailed somewhere off the coast. A cooler head must prevail.

  Gwgon jumped into the fray and held up his hands. “Peace, Jarl Alrik. Peace, brother Hyffaid.”

  The clamor receded and men waited for the next move.

  Alrik pointed to Hyffaid. “Baroc knew we would be ambushed. He hung back like a quivering child. Do his actions speak to your own cowardice?”

  Hyffaid opened his mouth as if to say something, but Gwgon spoke first. “I assure you, Alrik. We only learned of the ambush when your man rode into our midst. We sent men to survey the area, ensuring no other dogs lay in wait, but we discovered the news too late to aid your cause.”

  “I demand restitution.” Alrik said.

  “And what of my claim, Jarl Alrik? You attacked my own cousin.” Hyffaid’s round face blossomed to a mottled crimson.

  “Out of respect for our alliance, I spared his life. My brothers would not have done the same. Should I reconsider my retribution?” He stode toward Baroc, who leaned against a tree, his skin slick with sweat. Baroc tried to stand taller, but everyone knew there would be little contest.

  I wanted to scream at Alrik to stop, but feared that challenging him in front of all these men would only fuel his need for violence.

  Gwgon stepped in front of Baroc. “You have my word, Alrik. This will never happen again. Hyffaid and I will pay each warrior’s blood price. Will that appease your men?”

  Alrik glanced at Cormac. Cormac responded. “It is a start.”

  Gwgon nodded. “From this point on, as a show of good faith, Hyffaid and I will march by your side.”

  Hyffaid’s color didn’t retreat, but he nodded his agreement before storming off.

  “We need to see to our dead.” Alrik slipped his axe in the loop of leather at his waist.

  “Of course. Lampeter is a short march away. We will ready pallets.” Gwgon’s body sagged as if it breathed a sigh of relief.

  I didn’t blame him. There weren’t many times I’d witnessed that hostility driving off Alrik in waves, like the heat from the sun on a scorched, dusty field, but when I did, the feral berserker beneath the calm surface of tenderness unnerved even me.

  Alrik grunted and returned to his men, the march forward continuing without further delay. Tension laced the air as the army trudged along the unprotected road, but at least the animosity between Vikings and Welshmen diminished. Gwgon and Hyffaid flanked Alrik as they led the cortege, the dead men carried in honor behind them. By the time we trudged across a small ford on the River Teifi and reached Lampeter in Cantref Mawr, everyone seemed relieved and ready for mead and feasting.

  The Vikings built a great pyre and laid their dead on a wooden platform. I stood by Alrik’s side as towering flames consumed their bodies. Ravens called from the woods. Alrik turned to the sound. “Odin is pleased.”

  All around me, men smiled at the omen, the mood shifting at once from grief to celebration. Horns lifted and drink flowed. Rhodri’s attack would further strain Alrik’s relationship with his men. They didn’t want to be here, and while their coffers continued to fill, the weight of the whole might cause the tenuous balance to buckle. The spectre of darkness swirled around me. The wedge, the chasm that would drive Alrik and me apart could come from any direction, and I felt as though I teetered on the very edge of it. Would Alrik’s men be the catalyst? Would the divide between the Vikings and Welsh deliver the final blow? Would Marared and her threats be our undoing? Or would Osric and Demas’s reach pluck me from my intangible veil of safety? The more I dwelled on my predicament, the more desperate I was to circumvent it. I needed to do something.

  I left Alrik and his men to celebrate the lives of their dead and retrieved my locked chest, sneaking away to the welcoming trunk of a large oak tree. On a small rise, it overlooked the camp and would afford me some warning should someone seek to find me. Alrik would be engaged until the wee hours of dawn. This was the perfect opportunity to look over Plegmund’s absconded letters.

  I laid them out in front of me, sorting by sender. The majority of correspondence passed between Demas and Osric, but there were a few missives addressed to powerful earls throughout Wessex. On the surface, the letters seemed benign, but invariably, there would be a passage of g
ibberish. I applied the code used in Muirgen’s book, but it did nothing to clear up the ambiguity of the phrases.

  Muirgen had once shown me how to write in a way that only bright light or a candle’s glow could reveal the secret. I held the paper up, squinting into the sun, but there was no evidence of faint scrawls between the lines of written text. The margins, however, caught my eye. On a few of the letters, there were holes perforated in the parchment.

  I ripped up a patch of grass beside me, creating a writing tablet of sorts in the dirt, and grabbed a small twig. I picked one of the encoded gibberish words and applied a series of letters based on the method Muirgen had taught me. When shifting the letters by a placement of three didn’t work, I worked my way through the Latin alphabet, trying every possible combination.

  Sunlight faded, and I still hadn’t discovered the letters’ hidden messages. I wondered if perhaps Osric had used the English letters instead. I frowned. I would have to try again. Down at the camp, the flames of bonfires danced in the wind, lighting my path. I found the wagon with my belongings and tucked my chest deep beneath a few of my other possessions. I was about to leave to look for Alrik when I spied Cormac bustling in my direction.

  “Everything all right?” I asked, searching his pale face in the waning light.

  He held out his arm. A nasty gash dissected the flesh. “Bloody fish.”

  “How exactly did a fish do that?”

  He huffed. “Trying to snare the thing in my net. If it hadn’t evaded my efforts, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You should have someone look at that.”

  “Pah. That’s what Alrik said. Waste of time if you ask me. Nothing to it.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing. Where’s the tent?” As always with a moving army, there was a healing area set up. Men in close proximity to weapons, combined with copious drinking and carousing, made for a volatile and rich environment for head wounds, severed fingers, lacerations, broken noses, swollen knuckles, and gut and bowel unrest. The women of the camp took it in turns to tend the daft fools until late in the night.