by Sarah Zettel
“You’re an intelligent man, Agravain. You know the fact that you’ve lost Arthur’s blessing will make it difficult for you to command men and stores from the Britons who hold the coast you must pass by. Especially when their promises were given reluctantly to begin with.” He grinned up at Agravain.
So, you keep your ear open to the doings of your neighbours. Very good, Sifred.
“I, however, seeing your circumstances, feel no such reluctance. It is in my power to place three hundred men at your command, all armed, all spoiling for a fight. In return, I ask that if Arthur attempts to make me another of his vassals, you’ll work to stop it.”
Sifred sat back, folding his arms across his broad belly, his whole manner that of a confident trader. There! You cannot say fairer than that!
“And how would you be sure I’d keep my end of this … bargain?” inquired Agravain.
Sifred grinned broadly and waggled his finger. “Firstly, because I see you’re a city man, a Romanish man, who honours the agreement he puts his name to. Secondly, because you would of course show your gratitude for my three hundred men by giving them each three or four hides worth of land around that great fortress rock of yours.”
“Of course,” Agravain replied blandly. “It would be only fair.”
“So, what say you?” Sifred didn’t move, but his eyes narrowed.
Agravain lifted his cup, he inhaled the warming scent of the wine, and sipped, setting the cup down again.
“I say that a man could do far worse than have such a promise at his back during his travels.”
A spasm of annoyance crossed Sifred’s red face. “Come, come, Agravain,” he beckoned impatiently. “This is not a time to mince words. I’ve made you an open proposal, one man to another. I must have a more certain reply than that.”
Again, Agravain felt that brittle undertone. It was not desperation, but rather a kind of hope. Sifred needed things to go his way. He needed this offer to be accepted. Something was riding on this, and it was much more than aid in a war that might never come.
You said your men are spoiling for a fight. How badly? Badly enough to decide you should not be their leader anymore?
But before he could speak, a crash sounded from the women’s table. Agravain jerked his head around. Laurel lolled forward in her chair, a cup of wine at her feet spilling out in a pool of blood red across the muddy flagstones.
He was on his feet before any of the other men moved, and across the room before Sifred could open his mouth and remind him this was a matter for women’s hands.
Agravain took Laurel’s hand, and she gripped his hard. She felt neither cold nor fevered and the glance she shot him through her separated fingers was firm and clear.
“Are you ill, my wife?” he asked softly.
“Only a little, only a little, my husband,” she answered, but she did so in court Latin, and she slumped towards him as she said it.
He laid one hand on her brow, and looked into her bright eyes.
“Our host is not one to speak softly,” he murmured also in Latin. “What do you think of this?”
Laurel removed his hand, patting it, a gesture of conciliation and reassurance. “I think Lord Sifred is most likely an honest man after his kind, but I think he should watch his back, and I think we should leave here now.”
Agravain frowned. “How so?”
“The women I sat with are most … opinionated. Their insults ranged from me and my appearance, to you and your heritage.” She made a fair show of a brave attempt to sit up and smile. “They also had much to say about their overlord. They also sighed after the dream of being led by a real man, not some … fat horse-trader, I believe was how one of them put it.”
“So.” Agravain lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed the back to his lips. “I think I must go make my excuses to our host. Thank you for your … caution, my lady.”
A slight smile flickered across her face. “You are most welcome, my lord. It was … instructive. I believe I have improved my knowledge of their tongue significantly.”
The corner of his mouth twitched as he turned back to Sifred and the waiting men. The air about them had chilled considerably in his absence. Some of them, at least, suspected something of the little mummery he and Laurel had just staged. Sifred however, looked nothing so much as mildly amused.
“Is your woman — pardon, your wife — well?” he asked, raising his brows.
With some difficulty, Agravain shifted his expression to one of embarrassment. “You must forgive me, my host. She is taken ill, and we must depart.”
“Ill? She should not be moved then. Let you stay here and my women will care for her.”
“I thank you for it, but this illness is not unexpected, nor is it anything that time will not deliver her from.” He made himself smile, hoping Sifred would catch the play on words.
He did. “Ah!” Sifred slapped the table jovially, making all the cups rattle. “Well, my best wishes to you then. But you cannot go from me without some answer to my offer.”
Their gazes met, and Agravain once more felt the keen awareness of every man around the table waiting to measure his words against their own desires, and whatever promises their lord had made to them.
“My host, your offer is generous, and your warning about what I will find waiting for me further northward is well taken. But you will understand that I must see this for myself.”
Sifred’s face fell fast, but he made a great effort to recover himself. “It will go hard on you when you do.”
“As you say,” agreed Agravain. “I will tell you this much. I go to a war I cannot lose. I will not give my home to the Dal Riata or the men of the west, whatever the cost. Whatever bridge I must burn, whatever aid I must beg or buy, I will not give over to them.”
“Well, Jarl Agravain, if that’s what you’ll give, then that’s what I must take.” Sifred heaved himself to his feet. “This is no place for a city man such as yourself to be roaming alone at night. I myself will return you to your boats.”
It was a courtesy Agravain could have well done without, but he could not turn it down without giving offence. Less so because it was true. Londinium was a place where wealth changed hands, and not always as the bargainer might wish. Alone he had no fear, but he had Laurel to protect and could not unnecessarily court danger.
Besides, the current of anger that ran through the house was now was so palpable he could feel it beating against his skin. It was not directed at him though. This was all for Sifred. It might be that the Saxon lord of Londinium had some word to speak or promise to make in private, away from those whose loyalty was so plainly weakening that a stranger could see the cracks.
Given this, it was perhaps not strange that he did not ask any of his lords to accompany him. Hilde shoved a lit torch into the hands of a stripling boy, who looked nothing so much as sulky at being sent on such an errand. Agravain reclaimed his sword from the old man beside the door who stood in place of a porter or seneschal. The men of his motley guard left the fire they clustered round with badly concealed reluctance and ranged themselves behind him. As they did, Laurel laced her cloak more tightly, as if armouring herself against the darkness. He did not miss the fact that she laid her hand on the small knife that hung beside her ring of keys.
Laurel’s eyes narrowed, and Agravain followed her gaze. Sifred and Hilde faced each other, glowering like roosters about to fight over a portion of the yard. Though not a word passed between them, Hilde gave a mighty snort and turned on her heel, stomping back to the fire and the grim party of women she presided over.
Sifred seemed to find the incident amusing and was still chuckling as he passed Agravain and Laurel. He gestured broadly to indicate they should follow him down his crumbling steps.
Londinium at night was like no place Agravain had ever been. It was not wholly a city, though the moonlight picked out the silhouettes of great houses and some new storehouses, but neither was it a village with the closeness that came of
common family and common labour. It sprawled on the river banks, but it still felt huddled under the scudding clouds, ducking itself under the wind that filled with the scents of water and waste. What dwellings there were rose up in clusters, leaning towards each other for companionship because there was no one else to turn too. Fires lit the night at random, futilely driving back the river’s chill air and the great masses of midges and flies that feasted among the reeds, giving it the look of a soldier’s encampment, but it was not that either.
This place knows it picks over the bones of giants, and the giants still might return.
Voices rang out at random in the darkness. To the right, a wobbly, drunken song broke out, the words so slurred Agravain could making nothing of them. There was no bond of discipline or purpose here. Each man’s work was his alone. All alliance temporary, and correspondingly fragile.
Agravain was glad of the weight of Laurel’s hand on his arm. He did not want her out of reach in these smoky shadows. He was even more glad of the men at his back, and knew without seeing that more than one had his hand on knife or hammer.
Sifred, however, showed no fear. His men might have their doubts about his leadership, but it was clear he still saw this misshapen place as his, and his alone. He wore the smoky darkness as lightly as a good cloak and stumped along in the wavering light cast by the boy’s torch, whistling tunelessly through his teeth. No random voice distracted him. None of the noises, shuffles, clashes or footsteps, near or far, gave him pause.
Are you truly that secure in your person? Agravain wondered. His own sword hung heavily at his hip, and he was as glad of its closeness as he was of Laurel’s. The back of his neck itched. He did not like Sifred’s silence. He did not like how they walked unescorted in this place, even if they did bring with them Londinium’s only lawgiver. The smoke, the stench and the unseen, unknown motion in the dark worked persistently on him.
Laurel felt it too. She walked stiffly, her pale green eyes flicking this way and that. She was afraid. Tension stretched out of her, as if she wanted to grab the wind because there was nothing else to hold on to.
Then, unexpectedly, Sifred stopped, holding up his hand in a way that brought Agravain instantly to a halt.
“Draw your sword, Jarl.” Sifred said, loosening the axe he carried in his belt.
Agravain drew, signalling to his men to spread themselves out, and cursing the fact that though there was a broad-armed smith and a wiry tanner, none of the four was a trained soldier. Sifred slipped his axe from his belt, and Agravain shifted to a fighting stance, putting his back to Laurel and his face to the dark.
Sifred whirled, swinging his axe down towards Agravain’s skull.
Agravain had just time enough to throw up his sword to ward off the blow, but no time to block the knee that drove up into his guts, doubling him over. The next blow would be on the back of his skull, and he made himself fall into the mud ahead of it, rolling over, feeling the hard length of his sword under his back. Half-a-dozen men rushed out of the darkness, grappling with his guard, swatting them swiftly down.
Breathing shallowly against his pain, Agravain rolled again, grabbing at his sword hilt, and miraculously finding it. He stabbed upward, and felt the soft jarring of flesh as his opponent swerved too late. It gave him just enough time to get to his feet, to swing himself around, sword up and ready. Two ox-built Saxon men faced him, stark and plain in the torch light, one with a short bronze sword, the other with a fat axe, both grinning at the prospect of a good fight. None of his guard was left standing, although they’d taken four of their attackers with them.
He was alone.
Agravain shifted his weight to his toes and took better hold on his sword, all but daring them to come to him, not daring to look away, but needing to see where Sifred was, where Laurel was …
“Hold there, Sir Agravain.”
One glance told him all that had happened. Sifred held Laurel’s arm twisted up behind her back. Her knife was in Sifred’s fist. A long red score marred his face and the blood dripped down to darken his beard. Laurel met Agravain’s gaze, her own face filled with a mixture of pain and apology.
Rage. Perfect as glass, deep as a well, it filled him like the soul’s own killing frost. It rooted him straight to the heart of the earth. It filled him with such impossible strength he knew that if Sifred had been in arm’s reach, he could have dug his hands into the Saxon’s flesh and torn his guts out. As it was, his sword all but vibrated in his hand, razor sharp, hungry for blood. Agravain could see with perfect clarity how Sifred’s pulse beat in his delicate veins, how his fragile joints held legs and arms together.
“Drop your sword, Agravain,” said Sifred. His voice was tinged with sorrow and he shook his head. “You should have taken my offer, man. Then I could have turned down the other.”
Agravain licked his lips and tasted blood. Stones littered on the ground at his feet. Shafts stuck out of the broken fence to his left like swords. They were all weapons. His arms, his legs, they were weapons. Even if he robbed Agravain of his sword, Sifred stood in the midst of a hundred possible deaths.
But he held Laurel out of reach. It would take Agravain three heartbeats, four, to get to her. It would take Sifred a single heartbeat to stab her through with her own knife.
Laurel shone pure and perfect in the middle of the mud, with Sifred holding her as close as a lover. It was unthinkable that this creature should hold her that way. He would die. Now. Agravain would kill him.
“Your sword, Agravain. Now.”
Although he could not take his eyes from her, Laurel was not looking at him. Her gaze was distant, unfocused, as if listening to a sound only she could hear. For a heartbeat, Agravain thought it was fear that drove her so far away, but that was not it. She strained with her whole being, reaching out, reaching beyond, straining with her very soul towards the unseen.
Agravain’s rage did not ebb, but it loosened, flexed, becoming less a fist of ice than a hand readying itself to strike. He could think again. He could buy time.
It took him a moment to make his hand obey, but Agravain unbent his fingers, and let his sword fall to the ground with a dull thud. He brought his feet together and spread out his hands on either side.
Look, I have no weapon.
“Listen to me, Sifred,” Agravain said softly, clearly. “No matter what quarrel exists between myself and Arthur, I am still of the High King’s blood. When he hears a tale of murder in the dark, he will crash down on you like a mountain. What you have built here will be burnt to the ground and all your people driven into the sea. You will have no warrior’s death. He does not allow such for murderers. You will be hoisted from a tree limb and your body left for the ravens to make sport of.”
Sifred did not move. His bemused and sorrowful expression did not change, but neither did he interrupt.
Laurel lifted her head. The distraction was gone from her. She was back with him, whole, and a new light sparked in her eyes.
Agravain did not understand it, but something sparked in him as well, working in his mind. It raised a new readiness in him, and brought words to mask this.
“You think it has already gone too far, that you will lose your honour before your own. Fight me, and you will be dead sooner or later. Kill me, and your sons and your hope of a holding in this island will be dead with you. There will be no more plots, no more plans, no more chance ever of turning any Briton to your side.
“Let me and mine go, and you will only have to fight your own kind, and they are men you have already beaten.”
Something new. Some new sound, new scent. A distant thumping that should have been familiar to him, was familiar, a sound he knew like he knew his own heartbeat.
Hooves. Horses’ hooves.
“You may also want to think on this.” Look at me. Attend my words. Don’t hear that other sound. Don’t hear it. “I am in no mood to let you die without letting the men here see what a terrible mistake it is to lay hands on that which is min
e. It may be I will leave some portion of you alive to make clear this point in their minds.
“What is your decision, Jarl of Londinium?”
Sifred shook his head. “You’re a brave man, Agravain of Gododdin, to threaten a slow death to the one who holds your life in his hands. Still, it is better to die with words of courage in your mouth.”
He raised Laurel’s knife in salute and in signal. That briefest of pauses was long enough for the new sound, the frantic pounding of hoofbeats, to penetrate Sifred’s hearing. The Saxon whirled around in time to see the red roan bearing down on him. Laurel threw herself forward, tearing free of his loosened grip the instant before the horse reared up and came down, and Sifred fell hard.
Devi.
Agravain’s squire wheeled the horse clumsily around, and charged again, screaming like a madman, galloping straight for Sifred, groping and struggling in the mud. Agravain’s surprise lasted only an instant. He launched himself forward, diving for his sword and coming up again, spinning as fast as the mud would let him. Laurel was standing on her own, the torch held in her fist. The boy had vanished. Smart boy.
Sifred, bowled down by Devi’s charge, lay still and bloody in the mud. Agravain dismissed him. The two other barbarians had jumped back, and were spreading out at arm’s length in front of Laurel, deciding how to dodge round her makeshift weapon.
Agravain gave them no warning. They deserved none. He charged silently, knowing exactly what he would do before he struck. The right-hand brute he sliced through the side, letting the blood and guts spill out of him. With the backhand, Agravain blocked the blow from the other, grabbing his long beard and jerking him forward, ruining his balance and his ability to stop Agravain’s sword arm as he swung it down and stabbed deep between the ribs. The man fell in a fountain of black blood.
Agravain stepped back, breathing hard, his mind calm and settled as he watched long enough to be sure that none of the three was going to rise again.
