by Simon Lister
‘Well, we’ll need somewhere to eat and rest. Elfilda, Wolfestan! Scout the area for a place to camp for a few hours,’ Cei said and Elfilda and her brother climbed sprightly up and into the ruins.
‘That’s youth for you,’ Aelfhelm said watching them disappear quickly as he bent his tall, lean frame from side to side to ease the aches the digging had brought on.
‘Trevenna, take Cerdic and scout back down the path, see if there’s any sign of pursuit,’ Cei said.
‘Whatever my Lord commands,’ Trevenna replied and gave him a mock bow.
‘Told you not to marry within the war band,’ Aelfhelm said once Trevenna had ridden off with Cerdic.
‘No point telling Cei that, he had no choice in the matter, you should have told Trevenna,’ Merdynn pointed out.
Elfilda and Wolfestan came back quickly and reported that there was shelter in a building next to a frozen river not far from where they were. It took them longer to reach it as they had to find a route their horses could take but when they did they stood silently in front of the ruin, staring at it.
Most of it had collapsed to lie in haphazard mounds of broken stone with snow-covered coarse grass prying its way between cracks and fissures. One corner of the building still rose fifty-feet into the air and sloped buttresses spread from both walls. The roof had given way a long time ago and no evidence of it remained but the structure had collapsed in such a way as to afford them a space inside like an unnatural cavern.
‘Gods, it’s a tomb. It has to be cursed,’ Aelfhelm muttered.
‘Are there ghosts in there, Merdynn?’ Leah said, crossing her hands to ward off the wandering souls of the dead.
‘If there are ghosts then they’ll have our company for a few hours because that’s where we’re eating and resting,’ Cei replied not waiting for Merdynn’s answer as he made his way across the rubble to the entrance. Trevenna went with him and one by one the others stoked their courage and followed. Two of the group remained where they were, staring at the shelter. Osla shifted uneasily and the proud Leofrun had drawn her sword as if it would give her extra courage but they were unable to overcome their fear of the spirits that might haunt the building. They both would have been happier if Cei had ordered them to turn back and face the shambling creatures from the square, at least they could fight them. It was not until Trevenna walked back out to reassure them that it was not beset with the spirits of the dead that they allowed themselves to be led inside. There was enough room inside for both the warriors and their horses and Cei quickly set guards as others started a fire deep inside the cavern with the wood they had carried from the forests. They drew lots for who would take the wider patrol around their shelter and Cuthwin trudged back out wrapping his cloak around himself once more.
Soon they were eating a frugal but hot meal with a hot drink to wash it down and as they warmed up, their spirits rose and they began speculating upon the ruined city around them, thoughts of ghosts and tombs temporarily abandoned.
Cei watched Trevenna as she joked with Leofrun and Osla, her smiling face lit by the firelight and he felt a warm surge of love for her. He had known her for almost as long as he could remember. He had been born into the Anglian war band where both his father and mother had been spear riders. His early years, like those of the orphaned Arthur and Trevenna, had been free from the chores that bound the children of the villages. Weapons training could always be postponed for a lone visit to the Wessex camps to meet up with Arthur and Trevenna. In later years Ceinwen and Ruadan would join their group and the four friends from Wessex would travel frequently to the Anglian lands to meet Cei.
Merdynn had originally brought the three of them together and as children they had ridden their ponies far and wide across the southern lands of Britain and they were known in most of the villages before they even left childhood. They were welcomed too because children of a war band invariably became warriors themselves and most villagers reasoned it never hurt for a warrior to have good memories of you and your village.
It was not until his mid-teens that Cei realised two things about his constant companions. He hopelessly loved Trevenna and while everyone treated Arthur with respect, no one and no village had ever seemed genuinely pleased to see him or welcome him to their homes. Cei did not understand why that was but once he had noticed the difference in the way they looked upon Trevenna and the way they acted towards Arthur he saw it everywhere and every time. Either Arthur didn’t notice or didn’t care because Cei never saw him react to it and he never seemed to resent or hold it against his sister or his friends.
By the time Cei was seventeen, and after a year of debating the matter with Ceinwen and Ruadan, he had declared his love to Trevenna and sought Arthur’s approval. Arthur had been happy enough for them and Cei had thought that golden summer the best of his life. In his memory it seemed to stretch on for years. Cei had been too involved with Trevenna to see that it was around that time when people began to fear Arthur, seeing in the adult what they had suspected in the child. People talked among themselves when he was far away from them, trying to voice what it was they felt. Most could not define it but others agreed quietly that it was in his lifeless, gray eyes, something different from themselves, something alien to their nature, something they could not reach. These fears and nameless suspicions were only strengthened by the amount of times he was seen travelling with and talking to Merdynn. Cei never really understood why others feared Arthur so much and their friendship had lasted and grown over the years. His love for Trevenna had never waned. As Merdynn crossed towards him with a plate of food he wondered if he or Trevenna would ever see Arthur again.
‘Lost in bad thoughts?’ Merdynn asked folding the robes of his cloak as he sat down.
‘No, not at all, they were good thoughts, happy ones. At least I think they were,’ Cei replied and pinched his nose, frowning.
Merdynn laughed, ‘Gods, you don’t even know your own thoughts!’
Cei joined him, ‘It’s a complicated business this thinking. Not really a warrior’s best quality.’
Merdynn chuckled and offered Cei some food from his plate. Cei helped himself to a piece of dried meat and started to chew it laboriously.
‘Let me guess where you were,’ Merdynn said.
‘Go on then,’ Cei replied smiling. It was a game Merdynn used to play with them when they were children. Merdynn rubbed his old hands together, his eyes twinkling.
‘It was summer?’ he asked, Cei nodded cautiously and Merdynn continued, ‘Hmmm, you, Trevenna and Arthur. Maybe with Ceinwen and Ruadan? No? Just the three of you then, when you were children?’ Cei narrowed his eyes and nodded again. ‘Right, it was the time when the three of you stole that cow from a village then lost it and yourselves on the moors!’
Cei laughed, ‘Yes, you can still do it.’
Merdynn looked at him and offered his food once more. ‘I’m not so old that you have to humour me you know. And you used to be either a touch more honest, or a touch more subtle.’
Cei shrugged in reply. Merdynn sighed and looked up at the winter sky through an arched opening halfway up the high wall.
‘You were thinking about your love for Trevenna and why people acted the way they did around Arthur.’
‘Gods! You can still do it,’ Cei said staring at him.
‘Did you reach any conclusions?’
‘Only that I still love her and that I can’t remember anyone ever loving Arthur.’
‘I think Ceinwen might have, once. But people can’t love what they fear. They can fear what they love but not vice versa.’
Trevenna came and sat cross-legged in front of them, ‘Dispensing eternal truths and worldly wisdom?’ she asked Merdynn.
‘Pearls before swine, I’m afraid young lady. Pearls before swine.’
‘Young?’ Cei asked.
‘But you got the swine bit right,’ Trevenna added sharply.
‘Oh, you’re not going to argue are you? Or worse, make up?’ Merdynn a
sked, equally appalled by both prospects.
‘No, don’t worry,’ Trevenna said smiling brilliantly at him.
Confronted with that smile and her laughing, turquoise blue eyes, Merdynn could not stop a slow smile forming on his own lips.
‘You have an extraordinary power you know,’ Merdynn said to her. She winked at him in acknowledgement.
‘So do you it seems,’ Cei said, ‘What was it that you did back there?’
‘Something simple Nature did to stop those Irrades getting themselves into trouble.’
‘Who?’ Trevenna asked, puzzled at the exchange.
‘Irrades – it’s what the poisoned descendants of this city call themselves.’
Trevenna still looked bewildered.
‘Beautiful but not, perhaps, the brightest star in the sky,’ Merdynn muttered.
She looked daggers at him.
‘Those shambling iron-beating creatures we came across! Good heavens woman! The Irrades!’ Merdynn cried, disturbing those around him who were attempting to sleep. He continued in a quieter voice, ‘Though in truth I think I’m the dullard. No idea what possessed me to start fooling around this far from our own land. I’ll kick myself if it leads to ill.’
‘Well, if you need help just give me a nod,’ Trevenna said and got up to find a place to rest for a while.
‘She’s got the right idea,’ Cei said standing up too, ‘About resting that is – not kicking you.’ He picked his way over the sleeping figures, following Trevenna and leaving Merdynn to absently chew over his food and his own misgivings.
*
Cei woke suddenly as Herewulf’s strong hand shook him by the shoulder. Still half-asleep he stared up into the grey bearded face.
‘What is it?’ Cei asked, working his eyes to focus on his surroundings.
‘Come,’ Herewulf said simply and led the still groggy Cei to the lip of the entrance to their cavern.
The sky was still cloudless and strewn with the brilliant hard winter stars but the wind had picked up and it was beginning to trail snow from the broken ruins. It looked as if fires burned deep under the whole of the city and the wind was whipping the smoke from the remnants of the surface. The icing wind brought tears to Cei’s eyes and he quickly wiped them away to stop them from freezing on his face. He was completely awake now and scanned the alien landscape for signs of danger. Then he heard it, faintly at first then more clearly as the wind subsided then strengthened. The distant tolling of a bell. He lowered and cocked his head to one side, frowning at the stonework before his face as he listened intently.
It did not have the clear tones of the great bell at Caer Sulis but it was unmistakably the tolling of a bell. Herewulf pointed in the direction he thought it came from then pointed off to the right. Cei nodded, there were two bells tolling with a haunting rhythm that denied the possibility that it was the work of the wind. He swore.
‘Wake the others, we need to leave here. Quick.’
Herewulf left to rouse the others so that they could get the horses saddled and ready to leave. Merdynn appeared at Cei’s side and crouched down with surprising ease.
‘Bless me, that wind’s cold. What is it?’ he asked, wrapping his cloak tightly around himself.
‘There are bells tolling out there. From at least two different directions. Your Irrades appear a lot more organised than the last time you were here.’
Merdynn’s levity vanished instantly. ‘We must leave here now.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Cei answered and signalled the lookouts to return. As they passed into the cavern Cei asked if they had seen any sign of the Irrades from their vantage point. Ranulf and Roswitha had thought they had spotted distant figures on the higher piles of rubble but the wind-blown snow made it difficult to be sure. Cuthwin had not seen any sign of them at all.
Within minutes Cei was leading his band across the frozen river, which embraced their temporary shelter. There was a deep layer of soft snow covering the ice and they laboured across in single file with the lead horses frequently sinking up to their flanks before they could thrash a way forward again.
Cei urged them on desperately. To be caught here would be fatal and they all realised the danger. The wind was gusting over the flat reach of the river and scything off the top layer of snow, reducing visibility to only a few yards. They pushed onwards and were relieved to reach the far bank safely.
Cei was the first to reach the far side and his horse laboured up through the deep snow covering the sloping bank of the frozen river. He pulled the reins around and watched as his riders emerged from the blasting snow that was being picked up and driven relentlessly across the flat surface of the frozen river.
The riders milled about on the bank as their horses snorted great plumes of hot breath that were immediately snatched away by the rapacious wind. Cei signalled Merdynn and Aelfhelm to take the lead and then searched the opposite bank for any signs of movement. He shuddered and pulled his sheepskin cap down over his raw, stinging ears but it was not just the cutting wind that made him shiver. The broken carcass of the ancient city that was laid out before him was both eerie and unreal. The winter stars shone down on the endless lines of heaped rubble and the half-collapsed towers stood out from the littered bones of the dead city like the ribcage of some enormous beast. The air close to the ground was thick with wind-hurled snow, which made the higher mounds and towers appear to be drifting across the landscape.
Cei could still catch the tolling of the cracked bells, their sullen message borne over the dead city by the storm. Then he saw the figures crawling over the buttressed ruins of the shelter they had just left. He cursed and turned his horse to hurry after the others who were already disappearing into the flying snow.
‘Close up and keep moving! They aren’t far behind us!’ he yelled to the riders as he passed by them. As he overtook Trevenna he stabbed a thumb over his shoulder and she understood. Leaving Leah and Ethain she moved to the back of the small band and joined Cerdic. Together they kept a watchful eye behind them while urging those in front to increase their pace.
‘Are we heading in the right direction?’ Cei shouted to Merdynn when he was alongside him.
Merdynn looked up through the swirling snow at the constellations ahead of them then back towards the way they had come.
‘Ish.’
‘What?’ Cei shouted above the wind.
Merdynn shrugged and nodded which Cei took to mean he did not really know, but this way was as good as any other. It didn’t comfort him. It was no good escaping from those behind if they had no idea what was ahead. He left Aelfhelm and Cuthwin to forge the path onwards and passed back down the file of horsemen, telling them to keep close together and ride two abreast so that they could keep a watch on either flank.
They travelled that way for an hour, covering no more than two or three miles through the labyrinth of snowed gulleys before the wind carried to them once again the clanging of the iron bells. Minutes later Ethain gave a muffled shout, pointing to the high ruins on their left flank. His softly spoken voice did not carry to the others and Leah bellowed out the warning. Misshapen figures were shambling across the hills of rubble, tracking parallel to them and matching their pace.
They pulled their horses up and Leah swung her bow off her shoulder but Cei stopped her from shooting. Their trackers were over a hundred yards away, the wind was strong and their supply of arrows was limited. Cei was unsure what to do. He could not attack the pursuers without clambering up into the ruins and leaving their horses behind, and clearly they were not able to outpace the Irrades in this terrain.
‘Why are we waiting? We should attack them!’ Cerdic yelled out hefting his sword. Ethain gave him a surreptitious look of heart-felt hatred.
‘Daft bugger, they’d have our horses away and scoffed before we got anywhere near them,’ Leah remarked leaning in close to Ethain who regarded her with renewed fondness.
‘They can watch from that distance all they like!’ Herewulf
shouted over to Cei who nodded and ordered them to continue onwards. They had not gone more than two hundred yards when a yelp from Ethain told them that the Irrades were now shadowing them on both sides. Cei urged them onwards but the deep snow made it impossible for them to put any distance between themselves and their shadowers.
Herewulf spurred his horse to the front and Roswitha joined him. Together they took the lead from Cuthwin and Aelfhelm’s tiring mounts. Herewulf turned to Cei and voiced his concern that if the path they were following narrowed it would provide their pursuers with an excellent ambush point. Cei agreed and prayed silently to his gods that the route would not close in on them. Perhaps his gods listened to him because the path became steadily wider until it was almost two hundred yards between the lines of chaotically stacked debris that edged their improvised route, but his prayer of thanks died on his lips.
Stretching across the roadway ahead of them waited a line of black armoured Adren. They stood shoulder to shoulder, motionless in the wind-driven snow with their shields interlocked and curved swords raised. Behind the shield wall were three mounted Adren Captains, their silver helmets glinting in the starlight.
Cei and Herewulf pulled on their reins and stopped in their tracks. At the rear a cry went up from Trevenna and Cerdic, who had not yet seen what was waiting ahead of them. Behind Cei’s band the Irrades were swarming down from the high ground of the city’s ruins and cutting off their retreat. Cei’s riders bunched together turning back and forth assessing the threat that bracketed them.
The path behind them was now thick with the hunched and shambling figures of the Irrades and still more were spilling down from the hills of rubble to either side.
Herewulf turned his horse from the gathering Irrades and pushed his way to Cei, ‘There’s hundreds of those bastards!’ he yelled above the constant wind.
Cei looked from the waiting Adren and back to Herewulf whose greying beard was now white from the flying snow. They both realised the only way out was through the Adren line. Cei was about to give the order when Aelfhelm shouted and pointed towards the Adren.
