Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  “We will take Lindsey,” Edwin said, and not one voice dissented.

  * * *

  This time there were no wagons, no women, no bags packed with finery for show. There were two hundred gesiths wearing their metal wealth, with their mounts and remounts, a hundred war hounds, a hundred servants on their own mounts, a smith-armourer, and fifty packhorses. This time they ate in the saddle and slept rolled in blankets, and the outriders had orders to kill anyone—Angle or wealh, man, woman, or child—who saw them. It drizzled steadily; they rode robed in tiny jewels of rain. They crossed into Lindsey on the second day.

  Everything was mud. Horses foundered. Hild, being light, was easier on her mount than most, but even so, when they reached the shallow valley of the River Trent, she felt Cygnet trembling under her, just as her own thighs trembled and her wrists ached.

  The river gleamed dully, like pewter. Patches of linden woods formed misty thickets along the banks. Clearly the outriders had missed someone: the Lindseymen had had warning enough to throw down trees on the west bank of the river, branches facing the road, and to form their shield wall on the east bank.

  The Northumbrians laughed. The shield wall was only twenty shields wide and three deep and the clutter thrown in their path was light; the Lindseymen had had time to cut only small trees.

  Edwin ordered a halt—long enough to wipe faces and eat a handful of twice-baked road bread—while fifty gesiths and the wealh dismounted to clear the road and collar the dogs in their war harnesses. The outriders rejoined them from the woods.

  The horses and wealh did the work while the fifty gesiths formed an arrow shield facing the woods. No arrows flew. Lilla and the king exchanged looks.

  The horses stamped and steamed, and the unoccupied gesiths laughed and talked in great booming voices, though some were pale. All made the motions of eating, though few actually chewed and swallowed. Many threw their bread to the dogs. The dogs fought over it. In the hissing rain the noise was sudden and violent.

  Hild gnawed her bread. Her mouth was drier than summer straw. But she chewed stolidly and managed to swallow one mouthful. She raised her arm to toss the rest to the dogs, then thought better of it. Some were bleeding already, seeping red under the rain, standing in pink puddles.

  Hild drank from the flask of small beer at her saddlebow and forced herself to chew and swallow again. She felt strange, as though it were someone else who lifted the bread, who chewed and swallowed, who carefully unfastened the flap of her saddlebag and put away the bread. Someone else who loosened her seax in its sheath, someone else who studied the fallen leaf rubbish and thought it beautiful.

  A man put his hand on Cygnet’s neck. Lintlaf, on foot. “The king wants you to stay on this side with the wealh and the horses,” he said. Hild nodded. Most of the gesiths were dismounting. “Don’t try to fight. It’s not like a knife fight. You don’t know … Forthere and his men will guard you.” She nodded again. “Forthere is angry.”

  Forthere was. As Lintlaf and the rest of the war band checked their weapons and the dogs sat in a dreadful, eager silence, Forthere wrenched his horse’s head this way and that, and shouted at the wealh to stop their Thunor-cursed hand-waving and get behind those trees with all the horses, all, mind, or he would lop off the left leg of any lackadaisical lily-livered limpknob.

  Hild kneed Cygnet into his path. “Are you angry with your horse, Forthere?” She nodded at the great rope of drool that hung from its bit.

  “You…” His face worked. But she was the seer who had saved Bebbanburg; she was the king’s niece. She was the reason they were here.

  She nodded. “Me.” She understood his anger. Forthere, giant Forthere, was used to being in the van, running under the banner or stalwart behind a shield, not being left behind to guard the baggage. “Nonetheless, have a care for your horse.”

  He loosened the rein a little. “Stay behind the wealh, behind the horses, behind me. You lose so much as an eyelash and the king will have my ears.” He lifted his huge ham hand, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. A gesith looked up. Forthere waved him over. “This is Eamer.” It was the whip-muscled redhead Hild had noticed at Brough, now on a thin black gelding. “You will stick to him like honey on bread,” Forthere told her, and then, to Eamer, “Everywhere she goes, you go. Even to piss. You, her, til the Lindseymen are dead.”

  The king’s drummer began the beat. Both men went rigid for a moment, like hounds pointing, as the gesiths formed up in two bands. Forthere shook himself, gathered his reins.

  Hild’s scalp tightened. A battle, shield wall to shield wall. Linden wood to linden wood. She imagined meeting a man the size of Forthere, huge with battle rage, stinking with it; dogs dripping and snarling at her legs, her arms. Sharp swords cleaving down, splintering shields, crushing skulls, slicing off faces. Men sworn to follow their lord or die. Victory or death, no middle ground. They sang so they didn’t piss themselves.

  Forthere cantered off, already shouting.

  “Lady,” Eamer said, and backed up his mount to allow Cygnet past in the direction of the horse picket among the linden trees.

  The two bands of gesiths were now shin-deep in the river, the dogs already swimming. She was glad she had no choice but to hide among the trees, hide from the blood and the rage, the striving to kill. She kneed Cygnet forward.

  The drumbeat stopped. Hild twisted in her saddle. The gesiths were halfway across and up to their chests, and the drummer held his drum high above his head. The gesiths sang, to give themselves heart, and one group swung upstream from the Lindseymen, one downstream.

  * * *

  The picket lines were strung between trees. Hild slid from her horse, and the instant her foot touched the ground all sound of the river and the gesiths’ singing disappeared. Gone, as though sliced through with a knife. She blinked. Pulled herself back in the saddle: the singing rising to a roar, like logs rolling off a wagon.

  “Lady.”

  She got down again. The sound vanished. “The sound…”

  “A sound shadow,” Eamer said. “Cupped by a god’s hand. Or so they say. But I like to hear what’s happening.” He unstrapped his spear and slung his linden shield before dismounting.

  She loosened Cygnet’s girth and handed the reins to a wealh, and listened again: nothing but the murmur of the wealh, Forthere’s shouted command to the ten gesiths at the edge of the copse, and the dripping in the trees. She sat on the mossy top of a limestone rock shaped like a giant mushroom cap. A sword fern grew at its base. She tipped her head back and studied the bare branches of the linden tree above. If she stood to her full height she might just touch it.

  Sword fern, shield tree, and a maid whose name meant battle. Yet she was shivering.

  A horse stamped. Hild and the wealh jumped. Forthere’s gesiths laughed.

  The rain seemed to be easing. A few birds called from the trees. Hild pushed her hood back, trying to hear them better. She didn’t recognise their call.

  “How long will it take?”

  Eamer leaned his spear against the rock, took off his helmet, and scratched his head. “When fools are in charge, wise men make no predictions.”

  “Fools?”

  He put his helmet back on, took up his spear again. “Does war interest you, lady?”

  Hild had never been asked a question by a gesith before. She looked at him afresh, at his Gewisse brooch. “It does today.”

  “Then the Lindseymen should have laid trees on the far side of the bank, where we would have to climb them already tired from the crossing, heavy with water and slippery with mud. Or they could have hidden bowmen on this side to pick off those who cleared the path. They are fools.”

  Hild pondered that. “Why are they so few?”

  “Likely most are at Lindum, to guard the gold. If—” He broke off, slid his shield from his back onto his arm. “Down. Get down. Behind the rock.”

  An arrow chunked into his shield. She stared at it. Another hissed into the fern by
her feet, and then she was scrambling to her feet, leaping, up, up, up into the tree. She balanced on a slippery smooth bough, arms wrapped around the trunk, heart banging like a drum.

  She peered down at the clearing. Everything moved like flies stuck in honey.

  Eamer brushed the arrow from his shield with his spear shaft. The broken arrow spun away, lazy as dandelion seed, and landed in the moss on the boulder, directly beneath Hild. Fletched with goose feathers.

  Sword fern, shield tree, goose feathers. Part of your wyrd.

  A horse screamed and others whinnied, and whinnied again farther away. Men shouted. The sound was wavery and unreal. Hild stared at the goose feathers glistening tawny and white on the bright green of the mossy boulder.

  More arrows hissed from the woods. Men fell.

  Lindseymen poured into the clearing. Forthere shouted, “Shields!” and the Northumbrians—the ones not lying on the green ground with arrows standing from their chests—locked shields, and the Lindseymen, running and leaping over the fallen, parted around them like water. Forthere shouted, “Break!” and then they were all running, gesiths chasing Lindseymen. To her end of the clearing.

  “Death!” Eamer bellowed, and with a clang of iron that shook the tree, he slammed his shield at one Lindseyman’s head and his spear at another’s.

  A Lindseyman in a round leather helmet took Eamer’s spear under his jaw and the blade burst through his cheek. Eamer shook the man like a dead rat on a stick. Then, cursing, he flung spear and man down and drew his sword. Lindseymen, pursued by gesiths, poured around the boulder. Hild, shrieking like a gutted horse, half fell, half leapt from the tree, seax flashing.

  Someone slammed into her, then another picked her up and threw her back down behind the rock.

  * * *

  Wealh were catching the horses the Lindseymen had loosed and killing the ones they had hamstrung. Forthere was asking her anxiously, loudly, if she was all right. Hild wiped the blood off her face with a wet dock leaf and nodded. It wasn’t her blood. It was the blood of those who had fought over her like mad beasts while she lay stunned.

  A while later, she didn’t know how long, it was Eamer nodding while Forthere shouted. From this distance she saw Forthere had a dent in his helm, over his ear. Eamer wasn’t listening; he had his foot on the dead Lindseyman’s face and was trying to pull his spear free. Forthere kept shouting nonetheless. “… with her, like a burr. Like a burr. Woden’s beard, it was her they were after. The maid.” Eamer’s spear pulled loose with a grating suck. “The king wants her over on the east bank. Get her there safe if you value your ears.”

  * * *

  Threescore men lay twisted and burst open on the grass. A handful, Edwin’s men, were laid tidily at the side of the field, covered with their cloaks and shields, swords at their sides. A dozen or so of the Lindseymen stirred and moaned and called for water. No one paid attention. The sound scraped at her bones. She focused between Cygnet’s ears as her mare and Eamer’s gelding picked their way delicately across the trampled, slimy expanse to the leather tent where the king’s banner poles were driven deep in the dirt.

  The gesiths had found the Lindseymen’s beer. One of them, with a finger newly gone and blood all over his leg and teeth, was laughing and pissing in a dead man’s mouth.

  The thought of going alone into the king’s tent full of men who had just killed other men made her feel dizzy. She told herself that Eamer, too, had just killed, but still her voice wobbled when she said to him, “Stay out here.”

  Just inside the tent, the king, unhelmed, stood with his naked sword in one hand, point resting on the floor, and a goblet in his other. Lilla, still helmed, red with gore, stood under the tent peak, where two short-haired men were bound to the centre pole. One of Lilla’s men stood against the tent wall, deliberately seeing nothing, saying nothing. The tent reeked.

  Edwin was smiling. Blood clotted the mail around his elbow. “It’s a clear road to Lindum now, if we’re swift, and we lost only eleven men.”

  “Eleven men on this side, King,” Lilla said.

  Edwin ignored him and said to Hild, “You were right.” He pointed with his chin at the bound men. “Welshmen.”

  Both men were sagging in their ropes. One had been so badly beaten his mother wouldn’t recognise him. The right side of the one closest to her was sopping with blood from a wound Hild couldn’t see. Probably in his armpit. She knew from songs that was a good place to stab a man in armour. But this man wasn’t armoured. He wore a checked cloak.

  Hild knew him. The memory was sudden and sharp: the elm wood, the geese in the distance, this man standing with his brother in Ceredig’s hall. You have your father’s hair, and, later, Edwin Snakebeard will come.

  Gwynedd. Marro. Cadwallon.

  She wished she could run upstairs to bed with Hereswith, wished Onnen would be there to comb her hair. She made herself step closer. She nodded at the unconscious, beaten man and asked Lilla, “Will he die of his wounds?”

  “No. Though he’ll never be pretty.”

  Hild turned to Edwin. “Edwin king. Uncle. These are Cadfan’s own men.” She saw his twitch of surprise, which he covered with a lift of his goblet. “The bloody one will die. The beaten one can’t talk. Or not soon. Give him to me, and the first will talk before he dies.”

  Edwin’s eyes flashed green. “We don’t have time for spells and sacrifice.”

  “No.”

  Silence. “Oh, very well.” He waved his goblet as though the matter were of no account and stepped to the door flap to speak to Coelgar.

  Hild turned back to the blood-soaked man. He was watching her. She said swiftly in British, which she knew Lilla barely understood, “I still have my father’s hair, and my uncle’s. And the serpent has come to you. No, say nothing. You have no time. Marro, you are dying.” Marro stirred at the use of his name. “You are dying, but your brother”—and now he jerked in his ropes; she had guessed right—“your brother will live, I’ll see to it, if you tell me true. Cadfan king is dying, yes or no?”

  “Who are you?” It was little more than a whisper, but the same voice from long ago.

  “I am the king’s light.”

  He blinked as though he couldn’t see well. “Are you real?”

  She reached out and touched her thumb to his forehead. “Tell me now, is Cadfan dying?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Cadwallon will be king.”

  “He is king now in all but name.”

  “And he plots with whom?”

  A long silence. “You are not a man. Are you a demon?”

  “I am the king’s light.” King’s light. King’s trembling leaf who hid up a tree. “Who does Cadwallon plot with?”

  “You will keep my brother safe, demon, you swear it?”

  “I swear it. Who?”

  “Eanfrith Iding. Cuelgils princeps. Neithon of Alt Clut. Eochaid Buide of the Dál—”

  “You lie,” Hild said. “Alt Clut and Dál Riata would never ally.”

  “Enough gold will make for the strange—” He coughed. His tunic glistened as fresh blood seeped from his wound. His hose were soaked and sagging. “… strangest bedfellows.”

  “Cadwallon doesn’t have that much gold.”

  “Edwin overking does, even when split among seven lords.” His voice was a faint rattle and sigh, like a stirring in the willow rhynes.

  “Seven?”

  His eyes closed. She shook him gently.

  “You said seven lords. Who else? Marro, who else?”

  She wasn’t sure but she thought perhaps the strange sound he made was a laugh. “You know. So close to you. Also Dunod…”

  “Dunod of Craven?” He sighed, and this time the sigh went on and on. His eyes stayed open. “Marro?”

  She blew on his eyes. He did not blink.

  She stepped back. “He’s dead,” she said to Lilla. “Tie the other to a horse. When we have horses. Keep him safe.”

  Coelgar lifted the door flap fo
r the king to leave and the moans of Lindseymen filled the tent. Edwin said over his shoulder to Hild, “With me.” Lilla caught the eye of his man by the tent wall, gestured to the Welshman, and joined the king.

  Eamer fell in behind them.

  As they walked, Edwin and Coelgar talked of horses and supplies, and Lilla wiped at the gore on his mail, succeeding only in smearing it. The noise of the suffering Lindseymen was terrible, much louder than before. No one but Hild seemed to notice.

  She said to Eamer, “Why don’t they kill them?”

  Eamer shrugged. “It’s wealh work, and the wealh are on the other side of the river. Wealh work. Or women’s work.”

  * * *

  It was not like slitting the throat of a sucking pig. The pig had not looked into her eyes.

  After the first one, the thrashing and choking and mess, Hild wiped her hands on the grass and asked Eamer to find her a spear, a short one. He brought her one broken halfway down the shaft. The pale ash was warm. She stooped to the second man, curled on his side with his leg almost off at the knee, and said, “Lie still now, and it will be quick.” She tugged off his helmet and felt with her thumb for the soft spot at the base of his skull, set the point of the broken spear, and killed him with one leaning thrust.

  It was not unlike sticking a skewer in a roast to see if it was done. The same pop as the skin broke, then a good push through the meat gripping the iron. The juices that leaked were red, though, not clear, and the smell was quite different: shit and rust and mud.

  Around her men cried out louder, some asking to be next, some saying that, for pity’s sake, it was a broken leg, only a broken leg, if she would just bind it, and bring water …

  Hild moved in a bubble of quiet, her own sound shadow, but after the third man she found a knot of gesiths following her. She ignored them, knelt by the fourth man, and struggled with his helmet. He moaned, like a man in his sleep, but Hild thought he was probably too far gone to feel much. It was difficult to tell; half his face was missing. Behind her, the gesiths spoke in hushed voices.