by M. K. Hume
Solid ground?
Mud! Clinging, reeking mud further slowed their rush towards any survivors of the siege. Stormbringer called out to his men to be still and maintain their silence.
“Rescue is here—and we have food and clean beer aplenty. Just call out so we can find you.”
The answer, when it came, was almost under Stormbringer’s feet.
A man clad in full battle gear, but dreadfully gaunt and frail, had forced his emaciated body to crawl towards the riverbank.
“You’re skin and bone, man! Who are you, and where’s the main body of Leif’s defenders?” Stormbringer’s voice was rough with emotion. In response to a gesture from the Sae Dene, Arthur raised his torch over the starving man who flinched away from the cruelty of the light.
“We’re all ill, master. All who are alive, that is! I’ve not kept count, but Leif assigned his young cousin to that task after the first month. Leif swore that the Crow King would come, but you’ve been overlong in arriving. I am Hrolfr, and my grandsire insisted that we were kin to Hnaef Healfdene, king of the Dene, near to a hundred years ago. Anyway, my name is much like that of the king, so perhaps there is a family link there in the distant past.”
The young man was babbling and he knew it. Prolonged hunger had taken away any appetite, but he was so weak that his brain had slowed alarmingly. Fruitlessly, he tried to stand.
“I’m sorry, master.” The young man’s eyes filled with tears of shame at his weakness. “I don’t have the strength to take you to Leif, who is our commander. But if someone were to lend me a shoulder to lean on, I’ll be able to show you the way.”
Stormbringer swallowed a lump in his throat and pushed the man down gently so he could lie in the long grass of the verge in relative comfort, despite the insects that were attacking his flesh in tormenting clouds.
“Smear your bodies with mud,” the young man suggested helpfully as he caught the direction of Stormbringer’s thoughts. “It helps a little bit.”
The Denes hurried to smear their skins liberally with stinking, slimy sludge from the riverbank.
“Halgar! Swim back to the encampment. Once there, bring Arthur’s women to Leif’s encampment. They can make themselves useful by nursing those living who are the victims of their kinsmen. We’ll need makeshift litters to transport the injured and dying back to the ships as soon as we bring them to the riverbank. Horses would help if you can get them! The Geat warriors are supposed to love their steeds, so I imagine you’ll find a picket line somewhere. It’ll be near clean water beyond their camp.”
Halgar started to move, but Stormbringer stopped him with one hand.
“Put the warriors to work who aren’t clearing out the corpses of the Geat scum. We need hot food—nothing too solid or difficult to chew. And we need beer! Send some men back to the longboats to fetch whatever is needed. If Hrolfr is anything to go by, his companions will be in dire straits. Hurry, Halgar! He must be one of the strongest of our patients, because he managed to crawl this far.”
Halgar ran and dived in. In a matter of minutes, he became a black dot in the water, and then he was gone.
“Horik! You’ll remain here with Hrolfr,” Stormbringer instructed one of his warriors. “Ensure he remains as comfortable as possible until such time as we take him back to the longboats.”
“Aye! I’ll care for him, Stormbringer. I’m afraid of what we’re going to find in there, my lord. The smell is disgusting whenever the wind freshens.”
Horik had no need to say more. As the captain of one of Stormbringer’s ships and a distant kinsman, he understood the Sae Dene better than most. He also knew the sweet reek of old death, and he had seen Stormbringer’s efforts to control his rage. The Sae Dene had berserker fury in his heart, so wanton waste of life could unchain the beast that lived within him. Stormbringer could foretell what waited for them when they entered the encampment.
“Be careful, Valdar! Danger and peril lie in the darkness within these swamps.”
Confused by the interplay of information between the two kinsmen, Arthur started to move towards the flickering light and whatever horrors awaited them there. As Stormbringer joined him, Arthur could sense the heavy foreboding in his captain.
“Why do you want the females brought here? To nurse the sick? Or do you want to teach them a lesson? It’s possible that Hrolfr is the only one who remains alive. He’s young and he would have been strong before the siege.”
“You’re very calm, Arthur, but I suppose these men aren’t your people,” Stormbringer hissed. “Yes! I want these women to see what their man did.”
Arthur tripped over a tussock of coarse grass that managed to survive above the salty marsh that surrounded it. His right foot sank to the ankle in foul-smelling, clinging mud, so he cursed creatively.
“I’m not afraid of what’s tangible, Stormbringer. I was under ten when I saw my best friend’s corpse, and nothing’s changed since then. I couldn’t survive if I allowed myself to be squeamish. I’ve seen burned churches and nuns who were hacked to pieces after they were raped to death. It was all so unnecessary! I firmly believe that torturing these women, especially the girl, would be pointless.”
Stormbringer nodded, raised his torch, and then plowed on into the swamps.
“I know, Arthur, but I’m not always a good man.”
Suddenly, a wind shift caused both men, and the warriors who were moving carefully behind them, to hear the slow, soft sound of moaning. They realized the thin, reedy sound had come from human lungs.
Arthur tripped again.
“Oh, shite!” Silence, appalled and chill, followed the curse.
“Stormbringer! You need to see this.”
The shock in Arthur’s voice filled Stormbringer’s throat with bile. The Briton was rarely upset by violence.
Arthur raised his torch and scrubbed his left hand on his shirt in an attempt to remove the stain of something he had touched with his fingers. The man whose moans had warned them of his presence breathed his last just as the light exposed his body. The breath rattled one last time in his throat and chest—and then he was gone.
Some ten yards away, three bodies lay on the margins of the swamp. They had been dead for some days. One corpse had the green tinge of old death, and insects rose from its open mouth and nose in clouds when Arthur pushed his torch close to the ghastly, contorted face. Maggots crawled on the purple, engorged tongue, so Arthur had to force himself to control his disgust.
But the evidence of death, ugly as it was, hadn’t caused Arthur’s cry of distress. The first corpse had been stripped below the waist and the fatty flesh of the buttocks cut away with a butcher’s efficiency. The meat from the thighs had also been harvested: someone had flensed portions of edible meat from the body of this dead warrior.
“This body has been cannibalized,” Arthur said with finality and disgust. “And these two men, I believe, must have been the butchers.”
Stormbringer allowed his torch to play over the corpses of the perpetrators of the crime and the rotting meat near the bodies. Unlike their victim, these two corpses bore marks of violent death. Their bodies had been hacked about with sharp knives, and each corpse had been almost beheaded by blows that had cut their throats. The hands of these corpses were black with old blood, while their stained knives were lying in the mud where they had been dropped. Nearby, separated from the bodies by a small space, several lumps of blackened flesh crawled with maggots.
For the first time in his life, Stormbringer completely lost control of his stomach.
When only bile was left to be scoured out of his gut, Stormbringer ordered his warriors to stay back.
“Else you’ll have this hellish view of our own ugliness burned into your brain, like me. Go on into the encampment! Whatever we find there can’t possibly be as bad as this.”
“I’ll burn the bodies later, Stormbring
er,” Arthur promised. “At least, there must have been someone with scruples here who has executed those sods. Forgive them, Stormbringer, for weak men can become crazed if they’re dying of starvation and consider the means of salvation is close at hand.”
An angry, frustrated, and shocked Stormbringer finally reached Leif’s camp, which was on the only significant piece of dry land on this island. This camp was drenched with the same misery and despair that Arthur imagined would rule in the realms of Satan.
Every portion of dry land was in use.
Coarse, primitive pallets had been constructed out of reeds and water grass, and simple coverings made of cloaks covered this makeshift bedding. Some tents were also in use, but spear shafts had been used to suspend them over several rows of beds. Their fires burned in crude fire pits where pots of vile-smelling herbs and grasses burned, ostensibly to ward off the hordes of insects. Other large iron pots, filled with water, were boiling on the untended fires.
On the pallets, men lay in various stages of illness. Some still had enough strength to grip the hands of their saviors in gratitude and mutter their thanks through tears of joy. Others lay in a waxen silence, lost in the sleep that comes before death, so Arthur wondered if any of these men could be saved. Some raved in their delirium, their bodies burning from within in a fever that was melting the flesh from their bones. A few of the shaky, but less seriously ill, warriors were trying to nurse over a hundred of their comrades and, try as he might, Arthur saw no one who could be considered well and able-bodied.
“The Geat could have walked into this camp at any time they liked.” Arthur’s voice was thick with contempt. “Instead, they chose to let these poor bastards starve in their own shit. I’ve glad now that we killed them all without mercy. No commander who could issue orders that caused such an affront to nature should be permitted to lead men.”
Stormbringer was beyond the release of words. One trembling young man, trying to spoon some boiled water into a dying man’s mouth, pointed towards the center of the pallets where Leif, the Sword of Skandia, could be found.
Leif had been a tall, robust man in the prime of life before starvation and dysentery had melted the flesh off his bones. Now he sat, supported by his saddle, and attempted to eat a watery stew made from horsemeat and grass, but his stomach kept rejecting the better parts of the food.
Stormbringer introduced himself to Leif while, around them, the camp gradually came to some semblance of life. The women had arrived and, white-faced, began to clean and wash down the patients with the assistance of the Dene captains. One of the characteristics that Arthur admired about the Dene was their ability to take on the caring and often demeaning tasks of females, if there was no one else to give succor to the dying.
“How did you come to this pass, Leif? I apologize for our tardiness in answering your call, but I had difficulty in assembling our fleet, so many of your casualties can be sheeted home to me. But I don’t understand what has caused . . . all this.”
“Where is the king?” Leif interrupted. His green eyes were hot with fever. “I must give him my thanks for his assistance in our time of need.”
“He’s not here right now, but I’m standing in his stead,” Stormbringer replied tactfully as he pushed the jarl back onto his disheveled bedding. The warrior lord continued to try to rise with ineffectual hands until Arthur stopped Stormbringer’s distortion of the truth by interrupting his commander.
“This noble jarl who has saved you and your warriors is Valdar Bjornsen, the Stormbringer, who has been declared an outlaw by Hrolf Kraki, partly because he spoke out that it was necessary to come to your assistance. If it had been left to Hrolf Kraki, then you would never have been relieved. Stormbringer called on all Dene jarls of honor and pride to assemble in a fleet that would come to your aid.”
Leif’s face was a study in rapidly altering emotions. At first, his confusion was clearly written on his face, but then rage engorged his green eyes with blood. This emotion was followed by regret and, finally, despair. The sick man’s fists clenched and Arthur stared at the large bones of the wrists, which were virtually bare of muscle. Suddenly, the charcoal and purple shadows around his deep-sunk eyes seemed deeper, as if Leif had accepted that his death was inevitable.
“I should have surrendered to the Geat and brokered a truce whereby my people could survive. I was foolish to put my trust in the honor of others, so these good men became ill, hungered, and perished because I held to old treaties and allies.” Leif’s arm gestured to all the pallets and patients who lay around him. “This is my fault.”
“What shite!” Arthur muttered under his breath, but Leif’s sharp ears had heard his insult.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
“You’re being a fool! We’re here, aren’t we? I’m a Briton, so I’ve got no axe to grind, but I can see clearly that, while your king might have been disloyal to you and your tribe, the Dene warriors haven’t failed you. Look at them! Those men cleaning up the piss and shit of your men are jarls, not slaves. Forget the self-pity and show some gratitude.”
“Arthur!” Stormbringer was outraged at Arthur’s bluntness, but Arthur ignored him.
“Leif must be forced to understand the chances you’ve taken to save him and his command. And the plans that you’ve made to turn back the tide of the Geat invasion. I know he’s ill, almost to death, but I won’t have any criticisms laid at your door.”
“Your lad is a fire-eater, Stormbringer. This Briton, whatever that is, is right,” Leif said softly with a slow grin. “I was wallowing in self-pity and I failed to value your efforts to save my people. My apologies, Stormbringer! I have heard of you in the past. I’m glad to have finally met you, and my heart is lighter to be part of your plans.”
“Right now, you’re a hindrance rather than a help,” Arthur added crudely. “I’m sorry, Stormbringer, but this warrior is entitled to the truth. He’s a man, and he’ll react just like you. See!”
Leif clenched his fists and dashed tears of weakness and frustration out of his eyes. “Yes, Stormbringer, your Briton is right! What do you need? Tell me, and I’ll do what I can to help.”
Stormbringer patted Leif encouragingly on the back and began to brief him on the plans he’d devised to transport the sick to a site upriver where the air was clean and local villagers could be paid to help with the nursing and the recuperation of the invalid warriors. The Sae Dene captain was loath to divert too many of his fighting men to the task of caring for a hundred survivors suffering from dysentery and breathing problems.
Even though he was sick, Leif was a clever man and knew the landscape intimately. And so, within an hour, a temporary plan had been put in place for the evacuation, while Arthur’s females and other volunteers went from row to row to keep the survivors supplied with fresh water and tiny servings of well-mashed fish and vegetables, in an effort to rebuild some of their strength and prepare them for transport upriver by longboat.
Sigrid looked at Arthur with eyes darkened by resentment and dislike, while her mother clicked her tongue at her daughter and apologized for the girl’s resistance.
“She’s not used to manual work, Lord Arthur, so please take her inexperience into account.” The woman’s beautiful face had no power to tempt him because he needed only to look at the starved faces, hollowed eyes, and protruding bones of the sick Dene to be reminded that her husband had been the architect of this suffering.
“She’s a spoiled brat, Mistress Ingrid. I grew up in a privileged household, but I would have been beaten for such unattractive fits of sulking.”
Sigrid dropped the cup of water she was giving to a delirious young man all over the patient and then thrust her face into Arthur’s, although she was too short to reach higher than his chin. Arthur noticed, irrelevantly, that she was tall for a girl who hadn’t yet reached womanhood.
“It’s obvious that you weren’t the object o
f your parents’ love then, else they’d have tried to protect you from sick and smelly men who could make my mother and my brother very ill. My father would never have risked my life.”
“Your father caused all this! It was a cowardly way to fight and win a battle, don’t you think? And he took no risks with his own skin!”
Arthur was far from finished, although Sigrid’s eyes filled with tears.
“My foster father thought too much of his children to allow such ignorant, crude, and bad-mannered behavior to take place in his household. Had we so disappointed him by acting like peasants, he would have been very ashamed of us. As for my mother? We would never shame her by any of our actions—never!”
The child flushed hotly. As the color rose up her striking face, Arthur decided that she would become a beautiful woman one day, if she survived to adulthood.
“I knew it! Your real father left you, so you must be a bastard! Hhhhm! That explains how you could set me to work like a field slave.”
“My father was the High King of all the Britons, you silly little bitch. One day, you might learn not to criticize any man’s family or acquaintances at times when you don’t know what you’re talking about. As of today, I own you—body and soul! I also own your mother and your brother. Your mother will explain to you what that means, because the time for any pride on your part is over. You can consider yourself fortunate that I’m not Dene, or you would already be dead.”
Sigrid’s face was ashen now, but Arthur showed her no mercy.
“I’ll be forced to protect you from the wives and mothers of these men who may, or may not, return to their homes. Do you now have the common sense to understand what I’m saying?”
The girl nodded and pressed her face into her mother’s breast.
• • •
THE WIND HOWLED and the rain lashed the Forest of Dean in an unseasonal storm of particular savagery. The newly sawn pine timbers in the house were still bleeding sap, like the slow leak of pink-stained tears. But the forest smells survived in the timber, and Bedwyr woke to the perfume of pine needles, the scent of Elayne’s hair, and the aroma of dog that emanated from his old hound. For one short moment, his memory failed him, and then one last recollection of sharp pain surfaced in his head and he heard himself groan.
