The mule was grazing noisily in the sun on the other side of the path, plagued by flies, judging by the way it kept shaking its head.
I couldn’t have hoped for a better situation. I would be on him before he even realized what was happening, and could easily whack him on the side of the head with my staff. While he was reeling—or better yet unconscious—I would have plenty of time to rifle through his things. If he happened to come to, an extra blow would knock him out cold and give me time to make a run for it.
I smiled to myself as I checked that my knife was loose in its sheath. I was just standing up, clutching my staff, when I caught sight of something moving in the ferns up on the knoll above the man.
At first I thought it was an animal, maybe a fox, awakened from its sleep and only now realizing that there was a human being nearby. But then the sun reflected off two pairs of eyes.
I slid quickly back down onto my knees, relieved I was still in the thicket. Whoever those eyes belonged to, they clearly had evil intentions toward my intended target. I cursed to myself but decided to wait and see how things played out. If there were only two of them, as the eyes suggested, I might as well let them do the dirty work and hope to surprise them later.
I waited, my mouth watering from the scent of the roasted lamb that was filling my nostrils. Though there was still birdsong coming from the trees, the buzzing flies swarming around the mule’s head were even louder.
A man’s head popped up out of the ferns on the knoll. Judging from the wriggling I detected in the ferns, his companion started moving to the left, but then stopped and returned to his starting point. Then the companion’s head appeared above the ferns and both men started moving forward slowly.
It seemed that my target hadn’t noticed a thing. He kept chewing his meat and taking swigs from the bladder, which, judging from the way he delightedly smacked his lips after each slug, did not contain water, as I had first assumed.
The two men were on him so suddenly that I jumped even though I was braced for it.
With scraggly hair and ratty clothes, the filthy pair reminded me of my father’s swineherd after the pre-Christmas slaughter. A blow to the stomach knocked the wind out of the eater. The next blow—to the back of his head—dropped him to the ground. The first bastard pounced on the leg of lamb while the second grabbed the bladder and put it to his lips.
It was clear from the way they attacked the food—gorging themselves on huge chunks of roasted meat once the bladder was drained—that they were even hungrier than I was.
Suddenly I thought: What if this was all the food the Saxon had? Then my painstaking pursuit of him would have been all for naught, while these two bastards would walk away with full bellies.
The victim groaned, but his attackers hardly gave him a second glance. His legs twitched slightly and then he went still again.
I gauged the distance between the thieves and myself. Five strides should do it. And my staff would probably make the last two steps unnecessary.
And I had the element of surprise on my side.
I quietly stood up again. Clutching the staff in my right hand, I burst out of the thicket, screaming.
That was another thing Harding taught me: “Scream like a pack of devils. You’ll paralyze your enemies with your noise.”
It worked. Their jaws dropped and half-chewed lamb tumbled out of their mouths as they gaped at me in terror.
One, two, three strides. I swung the staff and struck the closer one on the head. He fell over with a thud.
I pulled the staff back, then realized my mistake.
The second one now stood before me brandishing a sword in his left hand, and one look told me he knew how to use it. He swayed gently from side to side on firmly planted feet, his eyes locked on mine.
What a fool I had been not to notice his sword belt just because he wore the sheath on the wrong side.
He feinted at me. I jumped back, and tried to use the staff to my advantage, but he just knocked it aside and closed in on me so fast I didn’t even have time to pull it back.
I smelled his foul breath and saw the triumph in his eyes and cursed the fact that I was about to die for the sake of a stupid hunk of mutton. I tensed my abdominal muscles for the blow I knew was coming.
He grinned, but then his eyes suddenly rolled back in their sockets, and he made a sound akin to that of air escaping from the stomach of a swine that was being slaughtered. He doubled over, moaning, and dropped his sword, which gave me a chance to swing my staff and strike him on the back of the head.
As the man collapsed, I spotted the Saxon sitting up on the ground with his own staff beside him. He had apparently drawn on his last reserves of strength to thwack the staff up into the bastard’s balls.
“Thanks,” I said. I surveyed the fallen men. The first bastard lay totally still, with blood and brain matter seeping out of his split skull. Although his companion lay face down, his moving chest revealed that he was still among the living.
I bent down and took his sword, noting how nicely balanced it was as I grabbed the hilt. Then I tied his hands behind his back with the man’s own sword belt before turning to the Saxon, who was rubbing the back of his head.
“I’m the one who should be thanking you,” he said, trying to stand up. He fell back on his ass and held his hand up to me.
I took hold of it and pulled him up, wondering whether now was the right time to hit him.
“You undoubtedly saved my pathetic life,” the Saxon said, still rubbing his head but now standing. I noticed that he wasn’t as old as I’d thought—forty at most. “What’s mine is yours,” he said.
In other words, I had found a wayfarer who would share with me willingly.
Chapter 3
It was good lamb, fatty and tender, and there was more than the one leg those bastards had sunk their teeth into.
From his mound of possessions, the wayfarer pulled a loaf of bread and another leg of lamb, brown and perfectly roasted, with rosemary rubbed into the fat. I hadn’t tasted lamb like that since being forced off my estate.
He also pulled out a cask. The mead was sweet and not very refreshing, but I drank greedily until I noticed how strong it was and realized that my life might benefit from one less drunken night.
The Saxon watched me in silence as I devoured the meat and bread. His blue eyes were bright and fearless, his face tan, and his hair—both under his felt hat and in his curly beard—was as blond as my own. He had slender hands with long fingers and was more wiry than burly. Yet, he still seemed like a man who could look after himself.
As long as highwaymen weren’t dropping down on him from the trees, that is.
When I had eaten enough, I wiped the lamb fat and cloying mead mustache from the corners of my mouth. Then I prodded our captive, who hadn’t moved or made a sound since I had immobilized him.
“He’s awake,” the Saxon said, not making any move to put away all the food he had unpacked. “But he’s good at playing dead.”
“Not as good as his companion.” I looked at the flies that had abandoned the mule for the blood on the dead man’s head.
“I’m Winston,” the Saxon announced.
Courtesy dictated that I announce my name as well. “I’m Halfdan.”
I had felled his attackers, eaten his food, drunk his mead, and now we had learned each other’s names. I gave up on my plan of attacking him.
“I’m on my way to Oxford. And you?”
I shrugged slightly. “Wherever the wind blows.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You speak like a nobleman, but I’ve never met one of those who didn’t know which way he was going.”
I shrugged again, then leaned over the bound man. “Pisspots alive!” I exclaimed. “He reeks like a tannery.”
Winston’s eyebrows were still raised when I looked back at him. “A nobleman who doesn’t like questions,” he said.
Oh, what the hell. “I lost my father’s estate to a Dane,” I said.
“So you’re saying you lost your father’s estate? You mean, it wasn’t even yours?”
I took a deep breath—why try to keep it secret when I’d already spilled half of it. “My father and brother died fighting the Danes at the Battle of Assandun. I was allowed to hold onto the estate as long as Ironside was alive.”
“King Cnut claims he will recognize the existing land holdings of the English,” Winston said.
I spat on the ground. “Kings claim a lot of things when it suits them. When Ironside died, English landowners were suddenly left in the lurch, without a champion. My men all abandoned me the first week, and a horde of Vikings descended upon me the next.”
“And yet you’re still alive?” Winston said, his eyebrows still raised.
“I was one man, alone. Well, aside from my thralls. At least I was familiar with the footpaths around my estate.”
“You ran away,” Winston surmised.
I glared at him. “I said I was only one man. Against a horde of Vikings.”
Suddenly Winston smiled. “I’m not judging you. Far too many Saxons are rotting in the soil because they chose to die for honor rather than live for revenge. Is that what you’re looking for? Revenge?”
“Revenge?” I replied. “Against whom? Cnut and the Danes, the victors who collected their spoils as they went? They fought valiantly and conquered this land fair and square. Or maybe revenge against a certain traitor? If anyone should bear the blame for the English loss at Assandun, it should be him, don’t you think?”
“Oh,” Winston said, his eyes widening. “You’re one of those.”
“Those?”
“Those who cheer the death of Eadric the Grasper.”
I spat again. “Hard to think of a man who deserved his death more! May he burn in hell and be denied salvation.”
Winston gave me a shrewd look and said, “So you have no bone to pick with King Cnut, even though he had Eadric—his own ealdorman and one of his most trusted counselors—assassinated?”
“I don’t give a goat’s fart about Cnut—or any other king. It is the right of kings to conquer. But Eadric’s treachery—first he sides with Edmund, then Cnut, then back to Edmund, then Cnut again—was the reason Cnut won the Battle of Assandun. To betray your own is lower than anything.” I stopped. I had not said so much to any man since I had fled.
Winston continued, “It’s been almost two years since King Edmund died and you escaped the Danes on your estate. What on earth have you been living on?”
I didn’t say anything. It was none of his business that I had stolen, robbed, and cheated to get food.
“You’re a nobleman and yet you don’t carry a sword?” Winston asked.
Would his questions never end?
I glared at him. “A sword can be lost,” I said.
He fell silent and eyed me with uncertainty. Could he tell that I’d sold it one day after I hadn’t eaten in a week? That its price had been dry bread and a half flitch of pork so salty I’d been parched all night because I was too hungry to soak the salt out of it before gobbling it up.
I could see from his eyes that he could tell even more than that.
“And you? Who are you?” I asked, trying to take the lead.
He chuckled. “Me? I’m no nobleman or warrior’s son. I’m a peaceful illuminator.”
My ignorance must have shown on my face, because he explained: “I draw and paint.”
He had to be joking. No one could live off of that. But he looked sincere when he asked me, “Can you read or write?”
Why in the world would I be able to do that?
“No,” Winston said, shaking his head. “I don’t suppose you can. But other men who can’t read still value the importance of writing. Kings, bishops, and ealdormen are all eager to see their deeds written down so that their greatness—or whatever acts they undertook to honor God—will be known for posterity.”
Now I understood what he was talking about. The local ealdorman once visited our estate on his way to the Witenagemot, the council of high-ranking nobles and bishops that the king convened periodically for advice. The ealdorman had shown my father a gift he was going to present to the king—this was during Ethelred’s reign. It was an animal hide with something that looked like little, black spiders sprinkled all over it. A book, the ealdorman had called it, a story describing the deeds of Ethelred’s father, Edgar. And I remember the picture painted on the top of the hide: King Edgar’s face in vivid colors, a painting so lifelike I almost thought it would speak to me.
“Oh, so you write books.” I wanted him to know I had understood.
“No,” Winston said, shaking his head. “I leave the writing to other people. At one time I did, of course, but now I enhance the texts that other men write with my illuminations. Many people can write, but only a few of us understand the art of illumination.”
The bound man could not hold still any longer. He whimpered and tried to raise his head.
“If you move, I’ll stab you,” Winston said casually, as though he were offering the brigand a sip of ale. The thief lay still.
“They caught me off guard,” my new acquaintance continued, turning back to me. “Otherwise I’d have held my own.”
I believed him. A man who spoke so casually of stabbing people was generally willing to do it.
“Why are you headed to Oxford?” I asked.
“Ah,” he said as he started packing up the food. “I have been summoned there by a lady who would like me to paint a picture of her husband in a book.”
A lady? Well, I suppose he wasn’t that old, and with his sinewy body and neatly trimmed beard, women might indeed find him desirable. But he’d said “lady” and not “woman,” so did he mean a noblewoman? I gave him a questioning look.
He smiled fleetingly. “The finest lady in the land today, according to some. Of course, others say she has been outshined by her replacement.”
I guess he could tell from my face that I had no idea who he was talking about, so he clarified: “Ælfgifu, the king’s first wife, is in Oxford. Or on her way there, at least.”
Ah, I understood. The replacement who outshines her must be Cnut’s second wife—Queen Emma. I knew King Cnut had married his first wife, Ælfgifu of Northampton, a few years earlier when his father originally conquered England. She’d already borne him a couple of sons. Since Ælfgifu was a prominent landholder, it was a prudent match, and one that also gave Cnut an air of respectability. He couldn’t be too much of a barbaric Viking marauder if he had an English wife and children, now could he?
I also knew that Cnut had recently married Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy. But what was news to me was that he had never actually divorced his first wife. So now he was apparently married to both of them, despite the outrage of certain members of the clergy. I reluctantly admired him for it—for being king enough to not give a dung heap about other people’s outrage, not even the Church’s.
“And what does the queen want with you?” I asked.
Winston narrowed his eyes. “Interesting that you say queen. I’ve heard that people call Ælfgifu Cnut’s consort now, instead of queen. But in any case I’ve already answered your question. I’m going to paint King Cnut for her.”
“So he will be remembered for posterity.” I nodded.
Winston smiled again, fleetingly. “So the king will remember that it was Ælfgifu who paid tribute to his great deeds, in book form. Have you never seen two women competing for one man?”
Was he mocking me? There had, of course, been a time when I’d had my pick of the girls, so I nodded.
“And now,” Winston continued as he began lifting his belongings back onto his mule, which had walked over to Winston as though he had read his mind. “It’s time we got going.”
“You call your animal Atheling and yet he is not the son of an English king, is he?” I asked.
He grinned. “Yes, a crown prince’s title as the name of a mule. Whenever Danes hear it, they laugh out loud and
immediately strike up a friendly conversation with me.”
“And Saxons?” Not that I personally took any offense on behalf of a dead king.
“The Saxons who remember King Ethelred think he was such a bad king that his sons deserve to have a mule named after them and are favorably disposed toward me for expressing their feelings.” Winston had finished securely strapping the packs on. “Shall we go?”
I looked at him in confusion. “We?”
“Well, I was thinking the wind seems to be blowing us in the same direction. Or would you rather live off what you can filch along your way?”
I was right. He knew far more than he let on.
“What about him?” I asked, kicking the bound man in the side.
Winston shrugged. “If you feel like dragging him to Oxford where he can be properly hanged, be my guest.”
No thanks. I’d never have a moment’s rest. But leave him here? I walked over to the prisoner. His eyes pleaded with me and he spluttered nonsensically as I thrust his own sword into him. Because, well, I didn’t have a rope now, did I?
Chapter 4
I lived better during the three days it took us to reach Oxford than I had for a long time.
The packs on Winston’s mule were a seemingly inexhaustible larder from which he conjured forth meat, bread, cheese, and, yes, even butter—not to mention sweet, malty ale and several casks of mead. I ate my fill several times a day.
We spent two nights sleeping under trees so big they shielded us from the morning dew. Since the weather was warm and dry, we woke up to birdsong and the sunlight’s elfin dance shimmering through the trees.
Winston was good company, actually. Not too chatty but not cross or glum, not even early in the morning, or at dusk as we dragged our weary feet through the grass.
He didn’t ask any more questions about my previous life, which was fine by me. I was eager to gloss over any topics that would feed any of his lingering suspicions that I might rob him.
He, however, was quite forthcoming about himself, and during the first two days of our trip he told me his life story. His vivid and animated tales made the time pass more quickly as we walked along through the warm spring days.
The King's Hounds (The King's Hounds series Book 1) Page 3
