It began to rain, a fat pattering summer rain, lifting the scent of earth and gorse flowers. Three ravens circled. From over the rise where the others waited, a horse whickered.
“The horses are getting cold,” the lady said.
He had given an oath. Without that oath, without the lady, he’d be a farmer who bent the knee to any man with a sword. But men who carried swords must be able to use them. And it was just going to get worse. They were tracking a band, at least half a dozen, and now it looked as though the three from the farmstead had joined them. They would catch them soon. Tomorrow or the day after.
“Oeric.”
He drew Clifer. Maybe the bandit would just die. Maybe the lady would hit him again and finish it. But she only leaned on her staff and watched him choke.
Those eyes saw everything. The green saw your heart, they said, the blue your mind, and the black … the black drank in wyrd and your woe so others might be safe. Killing was nothing to what those eyes had seen.
He swallowed again. He should stab the bandit through the throat, it was the surest thing, but he couldn’t bear to look at what the heel of the lady’s staff had done to it, oak driven hard and sure, with all her terrible strength. Since burning the farmstead the lady never hesitated. The lady never seemed unsure. Perhaps he wouldn’t either once he had killed a man.
But this wasn’t the hot glory of battle, the stuff scops sang of. This was like killing a wether with a broken leg. Only the wether didn’t wear clothes, didn’t laugh, didn’t long for a swig of mead or the squeeze of a woman’s thighs. A wether didn’t try to kill your lady with a sickle.
His legs felt like wood. The hand wrapped around Clifer’s hilt could have been a stranger’s. The bandit stank.
“Don’t shut your eyes,” the lady said.
He lifted Clifer with both hands, plunged for the chest. Clifer jarred in his hands and skidded over the man’s ribs. He stabbed again, again, again. Gore slapped him across the mouth.
Then he was on his knees, not sure how he’d got there. He lifted his face to the rain. It smelt musty.
“Make sure he’s dead,” she said.
Of course he was dead, he was hacked almost in two. But always be sure, she said. Always check.
“When you’re done, clean your sword, then join us. Don’t take too long.”
The lady strode over the rise and it was just him and the dead man. A raven thumped into the turf.
The lady had said just yesterday, An eyeless face discourages others. He looked at that thick black beak and levered himself to his feet. He felt very tired.
* * *
By the fire, Eadric lent Oeric his bottle of linseed oil and Gwrast showed him how to use a chewed twig dipped in oil to work flecks of dried blood from under the wire wrapping on Clifer’s hilt. Hild watched him. His smiles were jerky, his eyes shone too bright, and he blinked a great deal, but she didn’t offer comfort. What he needed was the solace of ordinary companionship, of others like him.
* * *
Indigo drained from the predawn sky behind them. Flicks and flirts of wind ran over the sparsely grassed slope. Hild lay on her belly. Dew soaked slowly through her wool. She ignored it. To either side, her gesiths inched forward. She checked to the north and south: Both bow hunters were in place, bows strung, ready to block escape west with a rain of arrows.
Another flick of wind brought the smell of greasy ash, singed hair, smouldering hooves, and the thick stink of unwashed bandits. She counted the huddles around the remains of the fire below. Nine. Some were large enough for two. One was wrapped in a striped blanket that would be blue and green in daylight. The farmwife had been showing the bandit woman how to beat it clean the day Hild had ridden away feeling wise.
One of the lumps by the fire, she knew, was dead.
They’d tracked the family for four days, always heading north and west. On the second day they’d joined the band of wolf’s-heads: hard, lean, and armed. Not poor folk getting by the best they could.
She’d listened to them last night, drinking whatever it was they’d stolen from some steading, then singing and laughing, and taking it in turns to fuck someone to death. From the sound she couldn’t tell if it had been a woman or a stripling. Not a child. A child’s screams would have been higher. While they fucked and roared and giggled, the last of the rancid cow leg thrown in the fire burnt. They must feel close to safety. There was no watch, and whatever they’d been drinking was potent.
Nothing stirred. Light leaked into the hollow, though not enough to change the greys to colour.
One of the bundles twitched, then unfolded to become a thin woman who tottered two paces before slumping into a squat with her shift around her waist.
Hild looked right and left. Nodded. The hunters nocked arrows. Gesiths loosened their blades and checked their spears. She tightened her grip on her stave and settled her seax. Gathered her feet under her. Lifted her stave. Bowmen drew, gesiths rose.
She drew her hand across her throat: no mercy. Strings thrummed, spears lofted. She ran.
She ran silent as a deer, muscles pumping, heels thudding on the turf. Straight for the squatting woman.
A spear thumped into the woman’s foot and she started to shriek and turn, thin shit running down her leg. Hild was already swinging. Her stave took the woman in the throat. She felt the soft shock all the way to her shoulders, then she was leaping over the writhing ruin, lips skinned back, gaze fixed on the blanket.
“Death!” she howled. “Death!” And the dark hollow filled with men and spears and screams.
* * *
She stood on the brow of the rise, leaning on her staff, looking west and north to a great gap in the hills. They were twenty-five miles west of the Whinmoor. Those were the foothills of the backbone mountains. In the low sun the river running through the Gap glittered, and faint sheep tracks showed along the valley on either side. This was where the bandits had been heading: north, through the Gap, to Craven.
Cian was in Craven. It wasn’t so very far. She could lead her men through the Gap and find out if Osric was such a poor ealdorman he didn’t know about the bandits rooted on his land, or if he knew full well. Ealdorman Osric would have to kneel to her ring …
But perhaps Cian was already back in Sancton with Oswine. And the queen would be very nearly due. She had to be there for that.
Morud knelt and kept his eyes on the grass. “Lady, the iron’s hot.”
She followed him down into the hollow, past the row of bodies, to the youth struggling between the brothers Berht. Unlike Morud they were not afraid to meet her gaze. Their own was worshipful. A lady of wyrd, a lady who could kill. Skirt and sword.
A pile of goods for burning lay to one side of the dead fire. A much smaller pile lay on the green-and-blue blanket to the other. It was a good blanket. Rhin would be able to use it.
The stripling had curly brown hair, hazel eyes, and teeth still new enough to be straight. He went limp when he saw her, but he weighed so little the brothers didn’t sag.
She nodded at the brothers and drew her seax. “Turn him to the light.”
He struggled, but the brothers tightened their grip. She slit the tattered remnants of his tunic. Flea bites ran down his hairless chest. She shifted the seax to her left hand, laid her right palm against his breastbone. His heart beat wildly. She fixed her gaze on his eyes.
“What’s your name?”
“Lady—”
“Your name.”
“Tims, lady. Lady, I beg you—”
“Look at me.” He did. His heart steadied, then slowed. “Tims, are you from Craven?”
His heart jumped. “Lady—”
“Sshh, sshh. No matter.” His heart slowed again. “Tims, answer me now. Are you willing to do honest work?”
“Yes! Lady, I swear!” But his heart kicked like a hare, and his pupils shrank to dots.
She stepped back, sheathed her seax, and nodded to Coelwyn, who shoved a spear up through Tims’s sunke
n belly and under his ribs. Tims screamed and writhed and Coelwyn shouted for the brothers to hold him still, still, you arseholes, and levered the spear to and fro, swearing until he found the big vein and Tims poured out, red on the bleached grass.
She toed through the pile on the blanket: a skin of mead, two good axes, a flawed beryl, a painted leather belt, and a bag of rust powder. She hooked up the mead skin, unstoppered it, sniffed. Mad honey. She poured it away.
Cynan and Gwrast hacked the heads and hands from bodies. Eadric carried them to the fire, where Oeric lifted the brand from the coals and burnt the wolf’s-head onto every forehead and hand. He hated doing it, especially the women, but Hild had said, “I’m the king’s fist and you’re mine,” and like the others he didn’t dare argue with this new Hild, hard as iron. He was hers to command.
They hammered stakes across the Gap and impaled the bodies, the heads, the hands, in a long row facing Craven, all branded with the wolf’s-head. That night, by firelight, her men limewashed their unused shields and painted a staked man and a wariangle in a glistening mix of blood, rust, and oil. Men of the butcher-bird.
* * *
Bandits would not trouble Elmet now for a while. She sent the bowmen back to her Menewood with the blanket and the axe heads. They were good blades, and the mene had no smith.
As she and her men rode north and east, the sky clouded and the ground turned soft. The sun hadn’t shone here yet, but it would; she could smell the change of weather following them. It wasn’t the only thing that followed them; but the Elmetsætne, instead of coming out to talk to her, stayed in the trees.
She told herself it was all to the good. The rumours were doing her work for her. But not far from the road a tremulous voice shrieked Butcher-bird! and a hazel tree shook as someone small scrambled out of reach.
She wanted to leap off her horse, climb the tree, back the child against the trunk, and shout, It’s how I keep us safe!
But there was no us. Belonging was not a seer’s wyrd. She held Ilfetu to a walk and didn’t blink.
* * *
They returned to Sancton at midmorning under a tattered sky. Even as she reined in, she saw the looks that passed between the housefolk. She could have made her gesiths paint out their shields but it wouldn’t have made a difference. Gesiths would tell their tales. Fate goes ever as it must.
She unhooked her saddlebags and tossed them to Morud. “Tell Gwladus to bring food to my room.” The whispers left the byre before her, running through the vill like bracken fire: butcher-bird …
She strode to the hall. In the doorway, the low morning sun caught the carved boar on her thumb and struck fire from her carnelians. Gesiths paused in their games and stared, silent, at the enormous shadow with its stave, glittering around the edges like a wight. One was Oswine, playing knuckles with Lintlaf. But no king, no priests, no Cian. Had he been and gone again? She left without a word.
She found Edwin and Coelfrith, heads together by the gate in the east hedge where housefolk were gathering elm boughs. She hadn’t seen anyone but wealh set elm aside since she was a child. The inner bark, when added to soups and stews of nettles, would thicken them enough to keep you alive, for a while.
Six gesiths, armed and armoured, stood to one side. Edwin gave no sign that he knew they were there, but they had an air of hurry about them, and their shields were on their arms, not their backs. When they dipped their heads to her ring they did not lower their eyes, and two did not bother to conceal the fact that they looked beyond her to see if she had brought her hounds: brothers who now wore shields painted with an emblem that was not the king’s boar.
She stopped outside stave-reach of the king and bent her head. “Uncle.”
He waited. She knelt.
He nodded. “Niece.”
Coelfrith sighed and the tension left his knees. Hild felt herself split in two: the butcher-bird thinking, I could take him, and the seer, I serve the king. She leaned her staff in the crook of her arm and wrapped her fingers around the ring. Hesitated.
Now the king gave her an amused look: Told you I’d want it back. “Did you bring me anything worthwhile, Niece?”
She let go of the ring and pointed up. “The sun, Uncle.”
“So we won’t need these?” He waved at the housefolk with armsful of elm branches.
“Will Eadbald not trade his Kentish wheat?”
“Of course he’ll trade. But why spend if I don’t have to?”
She turned the ring on her thumb. “The sun’s here to stay. You could plant a barley crop.”
Coelfrith said to the king, “Why risk the seed? We should save it for next year.”
“Don’t look at me. She’s the seer. Besides, she’s still wearing the boar. Even from her knees she speaks for the king. So what should the king say, Niece?”
Hild understood why the king hated decisions. There were always so many of them. “Wheat and barley both from Eadbald?” she asked Coelfrith.
He nodded. “It’s landed at Brough. It’ll come by barge to York.”
No risk of starvation, then, just silver. “Plant,” she said.
“How much?”
“All of it. But plant today. Plant now.”
“That’s what I like,” Edwin said. “Bold choice.” He held out his hand for the ring. Coelfrith moved to go.
“Wait,” she said. “Coelfrith, your brother. Coelwyn lost an eye. But he’s hearty. He’s strong. He fought well.”
After a moment, Coelfrith said, “An eye. Well, he has another,” because that was what gesiths were supposed to say. Just an eye, just an ear, just a finger. The gods gave us more than one. What will be, is.
He nodded to her, to the king, and walked back to the vill.
Edwin turned his hand over, palm down, pointing finger out. “Ring.”
Hild pulled it off her thumb and slid it onto his finger.
He flexed his hand, rolled his shoulders.
“So. Staking them out. A strong statement for a few bandits.”
“They came from Craven.”
His eyes glittered. “You’re sure?”
“You should ask Oswine.”
“Ah, you’ve seen him, then. Oh, do get up. Very well, we’ll ask Oswine. But don’t upset him. Remember he’s our honoured guest.”
He had rolled the work from his, to theirs, to hers, slick as goose grease. She would remember that trick. She wanted to stretch but didn’t want to seem too tall or too strong next to the king. “And our other honoured guest?”
“If, as you promised, the weather holds, your Boldcloak will be back from Rheged with Uinniau before the first leaves fall.”
* * *
Her mother dropped the door of the weaving hut behind her and studied Hild. She nodded at her empty thumb. “It’s left a mark.”
Hild looked at the band of pale skin. She scratched it.
Breguswith put her hand under Hild’s chin and turned her face this way and that. “The flesh is nearly burnt from your bones and the human from your heart. You’re nothing but wyrd and ælf breath. Spend less time in the wind.”
“Where is … everyone?”
“Begu attends the queen. It’ll be soon. The Crow is no doubt hotfooting it back from his stone church in York. You’ve seen the king? He’s been banishing people or whipping their feet raw. He’s fretting about food.”
“Not anymore.”
Breguswith nodded. “You gave him good news, then. It’s all he’ll listen to. He drove the scop out, said if he had to listen to one more tale of luck and wyrd, he’d cut his throat and use his sinews for bowstrings.”
She didn’t care about the scop. “Where’s—”
“Your bodywoman is no doubt making the housefolk miserable. Fear makes her vicious.”
Fear. What did Gwladus know of fear?
* * *
Hild sat on the blanket. It was new: green-and-blue chevrons. She stood, paced. Unfastened her belt, slid off her seax and purse. Put them on the shelf by the bed. S
at. She was hungry.
She tried to turn the ring that wasn’t there. She turned her beads, tolled through them. Penda. Cadwallon. Eanfrith, Oswald, Oswiu. And the yellow bead, the brightest. Christ, the most important of all. Whatever that meant.
She unfastened the beads, coiled them in her palm, weighed them. How mad was little Rhianmelldt now? What did Cian think of her? What would Cian think of the butcher-bird?
He’d come back with that bite on his jaw. He knew how it was.
She leaned over and put the beads next to her seax on the shelf.
Blue and green …
She felt the soft shock of stave on throat, the shriek of Tims as Coelwyn levered his spear up and down. She realised her lips were skinned back. She shook the memory out of her head. She was hungry, thirsty. More than hungry. Her clothes were filthy. She peeled them off, dropped them in a heap by the door. Sat down again.
What was keeping Gwladus?
She was so tired of waiting. Always waiting. She was the butcher-bird. She didn’t have to wait; she could take.
The door rattled then swung open, framing Gwladus: holding a tray, hair unbound and freshly combed, smelling of flowers. An offering: herself; all she had.
Neither said anything.
A pot on the tray rattled as Gwladus lowered it to the table. Hild made no move towards it. Gwladus, very pale, took a breath, climbed onto the bed, lay on the blanket, and spread her bright hair over the pillow.
When Hild still said nothing, made no move, Gwladus took Hild’s hand and laid it on her belly.
A thin linen dress. Nothing underneath. Hild let her hand lie there, feeling the heat and tremble through the light weave. Like Tims. She could tear it with one hand, tear Gwladus’s heart out.
Who’s to stop me, who in all the world?
She ached. She felt so alone. She wanted to feel Gwladus respond, rise under her, strong and fierce. Hers. She could take her, take her pleasure on her. This time Gwladus wouldn’t try to stop her. She would pretend to cry out with need. She had to. She was a slave. With nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Hild had left her behind once. She had to please Hild or be thrown away, to gesiths like Lintlaf.
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