Shadow Lands Trilogy

by Simon Lister

  He had immediately formed a friendship with Mar’h, seeing in him a kindred spirit when it came to pessimism and recognising in him an enviable capacity to brood. They spent many happy hours trying to outdo each other on the expected and worst possible outcomes of any given event. Balor was the kind of man to gloomily keep checking exactly when it would be mid-summer and as soon as the sundial suggested that mid-summer had passed then he would cheer up immeasurably and take great delight in telling everyone that the dark winter months were already drawing in.

  It was an attitude that Mar’h admired despite Morgund’s mocking scorn who maintained, with good reason, that the two of them would only truly be happy and content once the worst had happened and they were dead. For their part, they thought Morgund lived with his head in the clouds and his feet in clover and absolutely no good would come of it. All of which left Morgund at a loss to understand why Mar’h was just so disappointed with the world, and why Balor was so angry at it. With Ruadan usually siding with the more optimistic Morgund and despite their apparent differences, or perhaps because of them, the four of them got on like a summer barn on fire with the hay feeding the wood and the wood feeding the hay until the whole thing was blazing away merrily and producing an endless supply of hot air.

  But as Arthur watched them from the cover of the trees there was no sign of their usual levity. Each of them were grim-faced and their usual banter silenced. He turned his attention to the last of the riders and saw why: the youth was splattered in blood. Clearly it wasn’t his own and equally clearly they had been in battle. Arthur cursed quietly at the implication and called out to them.

  They all turned to the trees at the sound of his voice. Using his bow as a staff he picked his way towards them and those still on their horses quickly dismounted. They stopped short when they saw Arthur step up onto the roadway; his leg was heavily bandaged and his clothes were still covered with the blood from the fighting back at Branque.

  Ruadan cursed and crossed the path to Arthur, ‘It’s what I feared when I saw your horse’s tracks on the roadway. Were you ambushed on your way to Branque?’

  ‘Are the Eald villages on the way west yet?’ Arthur asked, ignoring Ruadan’s question for the time being.

  Ruadan’s look of relief at seeing Arthur alive changed to anguish. Mar’h stepped up next to Ruadan and replied for him, ‘They’re gone Arthur. The Eald villages are gone. Some army from the Shadow Lands attacked us. We sped here to warn you...’ his voice trailed off.

  Arthur’s heart grew colder at the news and he leaned heavily on the longbow, ‘Gods,’ he muttered then addressed Ruadan’s earlier question, ‘I’m not on my way to Branque. I made it there in time for their Lughnasa festival. So did an army from the Shadow Lands. The Branque villages have been butchered too. I was on my way to warn you.’

  They stared at him as they took this news in, realising what it meant. Arthur looked at each one in turn. Ruadan was swearing vengeance and gripping the hilt of his sheathed sword tightly. Suddenly he looked at Arthur, ‘Ceinwen? Her family?’ he asked, fearing the worst.

  ‘Ceinwen’s in the stable. Asleep.’ Arthur said, nodding to the closed doors behind Ruadan.

  He exhaled heavily in relief and then asked softly, ‘Anda? Caja?’

  ‘Dead. They’re all dead.’

  Ruadan swore, caught between feeling relief for his sister’s safety and despair at the fate of her family. The others had clustered around the two of them. Balor and Morgund were offering what sympathy they could to Ruadan while pointing out that at least Ceinwen was safe. Mar’h and Arthur were looking at each other both thinking of the wider implications behind the synchronised attacks on the villages.

  The last of the group and by far the youngest, Ethain, was still standing by his horse, some way apart from the others, alternately looking north up the road toward Eald then south toward Branque.

  ‘Are you the only survivors? Did any of the villagers escape from Eald?’ Arthur asked Ruadan.

  ‘We got about twenty-five of the villagers away. Elowen and Tomas are taking them to the Causeway. Once we put a safe distance between ourselves and the Shadow Land army we rode south to warn you,’ Ruadan answered.

  ‘As I rode north to warn you,’ Arthur grimaced as his balance swayed and he inadvertently put weight on his injured leg. ‘So then, the others are dead and we stand on a roadway between two Shadow Land armies.’

  ‘Not the best place to be really,’ Mar’h said casually.

  They all turned as the stable doors opened and Ceinwen emerged from the darkness shading her eyes against the late summer light. She had a brief look at the gathered warriors before Ruadan engulfed her in an embrace. They may have been brother and sister but their physical appearance couldn’t have been much more different; where Ceinwen was small and slight, Ruadan was tall and thick limbed. Their only common feature was their dark eyes, usually so full of life and amusement but Ceinwen’s eyes were still red and puffy while her brother’s were full of sadness for her.

  Arthur turned away from them and spoke to Morgund, ‘Get my horse saddled and bring it out.’

  Balor, in a rare show of sensitivity, moved away from the siblings too and stood by Arthur and Mar’h who were watching the road back to Branque.

  ‘Did he fight well?’ Arthur asked them, nodding at the lone figure of Ethain.

  ‘Well enough for a youngster. I had to dig him out of a hole – that blood soaking him should’ve been his,’ Balor replied.

  ‘He’ll learn,’ Mar’h added.

  ‘He’ll have to learn faster,’ Balor said, thinking about the sudden onslaught at Eald. ‘What’s our next move, Arthur?’

  ‘We’ll ride west through the forests then north to the Causeway and meet up with Tomas and Elowen,’ Arthur said as Morgund brought his horse out to him.

  Ceinwen and Ruadan joined them, both looking equally miserable.

  ‘How’s your injuries?’ Ceinwen asked in a hollow voice, gesturing to Arthur’s bandaged leg and bloodied shoulder.

  ‘The shoulder will be fine but the leg could be a problem. Small price to pay for getting out of that massacre. Ruadan you take the lead,’ Arthur said and repeated the plan that he had already outlined to Balor and Mar’h.

  ‘I’ll ride with Ruadan,’ Ceinwen said over her shoulder. Arthur thought it would make more sense for her to travel on Ethain’s horse as he was a good deal lighter than Ruadan but he said nothing and hauled himself painfully back onto his horse.

  The others mounted their horses and one by one they slipped into the gloom of the forests on the West side of the roadway. Arthur held back to ride with Ethain, ‘Tell me what happened at Eald and how it ended for the others.’

  The woodlands were fairly open at first and Ethain recounted the attack on Eald in his soft voice as he rode by Arthur’s side. He occasionally brushed at his clothes and watched in fascinated distaste as dried crusts of blood fell away. His black hair, which usually stuck out at every angle, was matted down with sweat and he seemed nervous as he talked to Arthur. Every now and again he would falter in his story and cast a glance back over his shoulder, and whenever he did so Arthur would ask him another question concerning the assailants and how they had attacked. Gradually Ethain stopped looking back but something about his manner worried Arthur and he would have looked more closely at the young warrior if he hadn’t been constantly distracted by the pain that was flaring up from his leg again.

  After several hours they descended a slope and stopped by a stream running north. The woodland on the far bank looked to be much more dense. Arthur decided to rest where they were for an hour or two. The raw throbbing from his wound was worsening and each jolt sent searing pain up his leg and spine. Ruadan went across the stream to see how far the thicker patch of forest extended while Mar’h built a small fire from dry, dead wood. Arthur examined his injured leg and redressed the wound.

  ‘Lucky it wasn’t poisoned,’ Mar’h said without looking up.

  �
��And fortunate the arrowhead wasn’t barbed,’ Balor chipped in.

  Morgund shook his head as he sat down next to Arthur, ‘I’d swear that between them they could find the dark side of the sun.’

  Arthur looked up at him and was struck once again by the pale blue eyes that contrasted so sharply with his dark skin.

  Ceinwen fetched a small satchel from Ruadan’s saddlebags and picked out a packet of powder which she handed to Arthur saying, ‘This will stop any fever and dull the pain for the next few hours.’

  Arthur emptied the powder onto his tongue and took a swig of water. Grimacing he wiped the back of his hand across his bearded face then said, ‘We’ll take two hours to rest here,’ he stopped as Ruadan came back across the stream.

  ‘It’s dense, probably too dense to walk our horses through,’ he said and ran his hands through his thick hair, dislodging snapped twigs as if to prove the point.

  ‘Then we’ll follow this side of the stream north,’ Arthur continued, ‘Ethain – take the first hour on watch.’

  ‘And I’ll take the second,’ Morgund offered and with that they unrolled their bedding and slept as best they could.

  Ethain busied himself with doing a wide circuit of their makeshift camp then giving the horses some feed from the supplies they carried. The wind from the East had either died down altogether or the forests protected them from it. The clouds had cleared but the sun was too low on the eastern horizon to send any shafts of sunlight through the trees or to provide them with any warmth. He collected all the water bottles and filled them from the stream and as he did so he noticed that while most of them slept soundly enough, Ruadan and Ceinwen were talking quietly to each other. He replaced each water bottle on the respective saddles then added some more wood onto the fire. He watched it for a few minutes to make sure it didn’t give off any smoke then sat down near the group. He found himself staring at the dried blood on his clothes and reliving the events at Eald in vivid and repetitive detail.

  Ceinwen wrapped the blankets more tightly about herself and Ruadan watched her with concern. She had a distant look in her eyes that suggested to him that she was looking anywhere but at the recent events.

  Finally she stirred and looked at him, ‘You should be getting some rest – I slept back at the way-station but gods know when you last got some sleep.’

  Ruadan shrugged to indicate it was completely unimportant and Ceinwen smiled sadly.

  ‘I thought I’d left all the killing and dying behind me,’ she said, staring at her brother as if imploring him to somehow undo all that happened. His heart went out to her but he could think of nothing to say that would alleviate her pain. She looked away clearly distraught and muttered, ‘They’re dead. What am I going to do now? My family gone, my village gone... I’ve nothing left.’

  ‘You’ve still got your big brother,’ Ruadan pointed out with a clumsy attempt at humour. A ghost of a smile crossed her face and she laid a hand on his leg.

  ‘Come back to the war band, you’ll always have a home with us – you know you’d be welcomed with open arms,’ he added quietly.

  ‘I wouldn’t know any of them now. Twenty years. How many are still alive from the old days?’

  Ruadan was about to say there were many from the old days but he brought himself up short. He hadn’t really thought about it before but now that he tried to name the survivors who would remember her he found that there weren’t many at all. Not all of the old names had died or been killed in battle but the war band had changed completely since Arthur became the Warlord sixteen years ago.

  ‘I probably know more of the Anglian warriors these days – more than the Wessex ones anyway,’ Ceinwen said.

  Ruadan thought she was probably right especially as it had almost always been the Anglians who escorted the villagers from across the Causeway but he didn’t want her thinking she would be better off joining the Anglians.

  ‘I don’t know any of these for a start,’ she said indicating those around them. Both of them were conscious she had included Arthur in that statement.

  ‘Well, you won’t know Balor or Morgund. Balor joined us about ten years ago and Morgund would have been too young then for you to remember him,’ Ruadan said.

  ‘And the young one...’

  ‘Ethain?’

  ‘Yes, I doubt he was even born when I left the Wessex.’

  ‘But you must remember Mar’h, surely.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘He was that teenager who spent his whole time chasing after Della – the blacksmith’s daughter. You must remember the antics he got up to. One time he nearly burned their home to the ground...’

  ‘That Mar’h?’ Ceinwen asked looking over to the sleeping figure. Ruadan was relieved to see her taking some interest and even more relieved to hear a touch of life in her voice again.

  ‘What happened to Della?’ Ceinwen asked, curious now that the old memories had been stirred.

  ‘She married Mar’h! They’ve got three children now.’

  Ceinwen smiled, ‘So he got her then, good for him. She had a witch of a mother if I remember right.’

  ‘You do. She’s living with them now; she left old Laethrig.’

  ‘Lucky Laethrig,’ Ceinwen replied with a laugh. It was a soft laugh and didn’t last long but Ruadan would have been happy to barter everything he owned just to have heard it. He had been afraid that the mention of Mar’h’s children would have sent her plummeting back into her darkness.

  ‘So what about Balor and Morgund?’

  ‘There’s not much to say about them really; they’re warriors. Morgund’s outlook on life is very simple – as long as there’s pretty girls in the world and someone to fight, then he’s happy. Balor’s is even simpler – as long as there’s a world then there’s something to complain about. Good men both of them, you’ll get to know them soon enough.’

  Ceinwen smiled but the emptiness had returned to her eyes and silent tears were soon coursing down her cheeks once again. Ruadan held her, mercifully unaware it had been his comment about ‘pretty girls’ that had brought a picture of Caja right to the front of Ceinwen’s mind.

  Ethain had been staring at his bloodied sleeves and too absorbed in reliving the brief battle and flight from Eald to hear or notice Morgund sit up and stretch.

  He stood up, crossed to Ethain and asked, ‘Got the hour glass?’

  Ethain looked up in surprise and then handed him the small time-keeper.

  ‘Get some sleep, Ethain – and ‘keeping watch’ doesn’t mean what you seem to think it does, eh?’

  Ethain retreated to his bedroll in guilty silence and watched Morgund take his longbow and quiver and move away from the sleeping group. He sat with his back to a tree trunk and wrapped his cloak around himself. Within seconds his dark skin and worn clothes had faded into the gloom to become part of the forest. Ethain had excellent eyesight but if had not been watching Morgund leave the camp, he would have been hard pressed to point out the warrior who had so effectively blended in with his surroundings.

  Morgund woke them sometime later with a hot drink then they packed up the makeshift camp in silence, each occupied by their own thoughts.

  They followed the stream north for several hours before stopping for a hurried cold meal and then riding on, always staying close to the stream as it gradually turned to the West.

  The forests were quiet and they neither saw nor heard anything of the wildlife that inhabited the woodland. Even the birds that made their summer home there had already started their own long journey to the West. It was as if the forest was anticipating the setting of the sun and the long, cold winter to come. The few animals that stayed in these woodlands were either already prepared for hibernation or keeping their distance from the passing horsemen. Even the ground over which they passed seemed to be bracing itself for the deep frosts and heavy snows now only a month away. Soon the land would be locked fast by cold.

  The stream they followed tumbled over itself
and swirled in agitation around the smooth, glistening rocks that stood in the way of its last desperate surge to the sea as it vainly tried to escape the moment it would become stilled. The deep forest waited in a crouched foreboding of the coming winter that was creeping closer with each passing hour.

  At length the broadening stream led them to the edge of the forest. Before them lay the Channel Marshes and beyond that, the cliffs of Britain. The marshes stretched for a hundred miles both to the North and to the South West before they succumbed to the sea. Over the years a broad causeway had been built, raised above the surrounding impenetrable and treacherous marshes, connecting the outermost settlements of Middangeard to Britain. This was the Channel crossing over which the villagers of Eald and Branque took their journey to the West in autumn to Caer Sulis and on to the Haven then back home again in the spring when the sun rose once more from the West.

  Arthur and his band were still some way from the crossing and they rode north along the ragged edge of the forest for several hours until they eventually came to the roadway that led down to the Causeway. Ceinwen dismounted and circled the area studying the ground while Mar’h rode some way down the path towards the East and back into the edges of the forest. Ethain stood in his stirrups and studied the Causeway looking for signs of movement. He saw none and turning back to Arthur shook his head.

  ‘Ceinwen?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘Fresh wain and horses’ tracks. All heading west. It’s the right number too, as far as can be told, and they passed here, perhaps within the day.’

  ‘Perhaps you could be vaguer?’ Balor grunted. Ceinwen studied him for a moment then just gestured to the surrounding ground, inviting him to be more accurate. Balor declined the offer by clumsily turning his horse away and joining Ethain who still stared out along the Causeway.

  Mar’h returned down the roadway and joined the group, ‘No sign of anyone coming, only gone.’