The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age)

by A. J. Lake

  ‘You stay here!’ he cried to Elspeth. ‘Look after her, and the child. There may be more of them around.’ He released Eolande. ‘I’ll come back,’ he said, and raced away after Cathbar.

  Eolande was standing as if frozen. There was a soft stirring as Wulf sat up.

  ‘Where have they all gone?’ he asked sleepily. ‘Have they left us?’

  He sounded merely interested, not fearful. Elspeth fought to control her voice. ‘No! Edmund has been . . . has run into bandits. The others have gone to rescue him.’ She turned to Eolande. ‘What happened?’ she demanded. ‘Why were you away from the camp?’

  ‘I was going to the forest, to walk in the trees again,’ Eolande whispered. ‘Edmund came after me . . . and then they were all around us.’

  ‘How many of them? What did they do to Edmund?’

  But Eolande stood in silence, avoiding Elspeth’s eyes, while the tears ran unchecked down her face. Elspeth did not trust herself to speak to the woman again. ‘Wulf,’ she called, ‘help me roll the blankets. We must be ready to leave quickly.’

  They had made up the packs and were scattering the ashes of the fire when Cluaran returned.

  ‘There are five of them,’ he said, ‘heading into the hills with Edmund. He’s still alive – we saw him struggling. Cathbar’s following them now. Elspeth, take Eolande and the boy back to the forest-dwellers. They’ll give you shelter till we return. Cathbar and I will ambush the bandits as soon as they stop; then we’ll find you in the forest.’

  ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort!’ Elspeth flared. ‘How could you think I’d turn my back on Edmund?’

  ‘Stop throwing yourself into danger!’ he flashed back. ‘I can’t . . . I will not let you risk your life needlessly.’

  ‘I’ll take no more risks than you,’ Elspeth insisted. ‘Let Eolande take Wulf back to the forest, if you think it’s best.’ Wulf clung to her hand, wailing, but she refused to look at him. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she told Cluaran. ‘If you won’t let me, I’ll follow you.’

  Cluaran sighed. ‘Very well. But if we meet the bandits, you follow my orders, and Cathbar’s. Understood?’

  ‘I would like to come too,’ said Eolande. Her voice was hoarse, but quite calm now. Both Elspeth and Cluaran turned to her in astonishment.

  ‘It may be that I can help,’ she said. ‘It was my fault Edmund was taken.’

  ‘And the child?’ Cluaran demanded. ‘We must move fast – there’ll be no resting until I’ve found Cathbar again.’

  ‘I can run!’ Wulf piped.

  Cluaran wasted no more time arguing. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Stay with me, and keep your eyes open.’

  He walked fast and silently, not looking back. Elspeth wished he would go even faster: she felt she could have run the whole way. Wulf trotted tirelessly beside her, apparently unconcerned about where they were going or why, so long as he did not have to return to the forest. Elspeth had explained to him that there was danger ahead, but not even concern for Edmund seemed to trouble the child’s high spirits.

  Eolande matched her son’s pace easily, and was as silent as he was. Only when they reached a stand of trees, a little way into the next valley, did she speak.

  ‘This is where it happened.’

  ‘I know,’ Cluaran said shortly. ‘We found Edmund’s knife on the ground. But no blood: it seems for once, these brigands didn’t want to fight.’

  ‘Why do you think they took him?’ Elspeth asked. Cluaran only shook his head.

  It was a question that Elspeth had not asked herself before, in her relief that Edmund was alive. But now it nagged at her. Edmund’s captors could be one of the bands of bandits that roamed the country, possibly aligned with Loki. If this was the case then this could all be some kind of trap. Another one of Loki’s tricks.

  ‘So be it,’ she said, half aloud. ‘I will meet you head on.’ Wulf looked up at her curiously, and she fell silent.

  They were no longer on the road. Their path led them westwards between two hills, then curved around the base of the larger of the two. Cluaran halted them here. ‘This is where I left Cathbar,’ he said. ‘Wait.’

  Elspeth looked around while Cluaran examined the ground. They were in a valley backed by the two hills they had passed, facing a much steeper rise.

  ‘This way,’ Cluaran called. He kept his voice low, and Elspeth noticed for the first time how quiet it was. As Cluaran led them out across the valley’s floor, she felt uncomfortably exposed, as if eyes might be looking down at them from every direction – but wherever she looked, nothing stirred.

  At least they had clear tracks to follow: the men’s booted feet had sunk deeply into the turf. One or two prints strayed outside the general ruck as if their owners had staggered – as a man might if he carried a struggling captive, Elspeth thought. But at the far side of the valley the ground grew stonier and their progress slowed. Elspeth watched Cluaran searching for prints from one patch of grass to the next, and fretted, wishing she had Edmund’s skill to look for their quarry beyond her own sight.

  Cluaran gave a sudden cry of triumph, and gestured to them to join him. Elspeth was the first to reach him. He was pointing down towards the rocks at his feet. ‘Good man!’ he exclaimed. ‘Look, Elspeth – Cathbar has left us a marker.’

  It was a rune roughly scratched out on a lichen-covered rock: a bird with outstretched wings and an arrowed beak. ‘Edmund’s white bird,’ Cluaran said. ‘It’s pointing uphill, between those two ridges. Now we can make speed again!’

  The sight of the little symbol raised Elspeth’s spirits, and she let Wulf race her to the foot of the hill. The pass that Cathbar’s marker had indicated gave on to another, higher ridge, where there was a track to follow. ‘Keep your wits about you,’ Cluaran warned. ‘It’s too quiet here. Something has scared the birds away.’

  They discovered the reason for the silence all too soon. As they approached the ridge, the wind brought the grimly familiar taint of burning. Soon they were looking down into the next valley, and another ruined settlement.

  Fire had ripped through the centre of the village, cutting a smouldering black swathe through the huts. The homes still standing at the settlement’s edge had lost walls, or stood at crazy angles, roof-posts poking out of their thatch like broken bones. There was no movement – no sign of life at all.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Cluaran muttered, supporting Eolande, who was white-faced and shaking.

  ‘Do you think the men who took Edmund did this?’ Elspeth asked.

  ‘No – though they may belong to the same rabble. But it took more than five men to do this work.’ He stared at the desolation below them, then turned back to the path. ‘Come on – our way lies along the ridge.’

  The track petered out after a while, but Cathbar had left them another bird-sign, its beak pointing towards the southwest, where a faint trail led along the hillside. The new path dipped, then climbed again among rocks. The coarse grass of the valley did not grow up here, and loose stones shifted under their feet. As the day wore on, Elspeth found her breath quickening and her legs moving more slowly, in spite of her fear for Edmund.

  ‘We’ll need to stop to find water soon,’ Cluaran called. Elspeth wanted to protest, but it was true: the weather had turned warmer, making her sweat as she walked, and her water flask was nearly empty.

  Halfway up the next hill Cluaran found one more marker, scratched into the dry earth. It was hastily done, but the bird’s head pointed unmistakably upwards. The sight gave Elspeth fresh strength, and she ran ahead, leaving Cluaran and Eolande behind. Only the child kept pace with her: he seemed as agile as a goat, and never missed his footing, though the stones underfoot grew more treacherous as they climbed. They reached what seemed to be the top of the rise and Wulf, with a little whoop, ran ahead of her – and vanished.

  Elspeth cried out in alarm, running the last few steps herself. Instead of a steep downward slope she found a shallow dip in the rock, leading to another
, smaller rise. There was a little pool of water at one end of the dip: Wulf was lying by it, full-length, drinking greedily. Beside him, sitting on the ground, was Cathbar.

  He raised a hand in greeting as the other two came up. ‘I guessed you’d be here before too long,’ he said; Elspeth heard relief in his voice.

  He had tracked Edmund’s kidnappers to an encampment west of here, he told them, on the other side of the hills. ‘Edmund was on his feet, but closely guarded,’ he said. ‘Whoever they are, they’re well-led. They’ve picked a hard position to attack, and posted sentries, so I couldn’t get close. We’ll have to make our move after dark.’

  Cluaran looked up at the sun, not far past its zenith. ‘We’ll go as near as we can, then, and rest while we plan,’ he said. ‘It’ll be no bad thing to get our strength back before we attack.’

  Cathbar led them a little off the track. ‘We’re less likely to meet someone that way,’ he told them. ‘If they’re the same men who burned that village we passed, I’d as soon not come across any of them unawares.’

  They were heading downhill now; the ground was patched with green again, and below them a scrubby growth of hawthorn, huddled beneath an overhang in the hill, had put out its spring leaves. Approaching the bushes, Cathbar slowed and turned around, putting a finger to his lips.

  ‘There’s someone there,’ he whispered.

  At the same moment a figure burst out from the bushes and rushed at them. Cathbar threw himself to one side as a blade whipped past his head. Elspeth’s left hand flew to her sword hilt – but the captain was already stepping back from his assailant, his arms spread wide.

  ‘We mean no harm, mistress!’ he cried.

  She was a skinny young woman, pale-haired and freckled, seemingly not much older than Elspeth. She grasped a rusty strip of metal that looked as if it might have been a ploughshare. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded. Her voice was fierce, but she lowered the rusty blade as she looked at Elspeth, Eolande and Wulf.

  ‘Nothing,’ Elspeth told her. ‘We’re just travellers, looking for a safe place to rest.’

  ‘Safe!’ the young woman echoed bitterly. She ducked back into the bushes, and Elspeth heard a whispered conversation before she emerged again.

  ‘You can share our shelter, if you’ve a mind to,’ she said. ‘Though there’s not much room.’

  The rocky overhang extended behind the bushes to form a shallow cave, only a few arm-spans deep and too low to stand upright. A woman, much older than the first, shifted to make space for them as they forced their way through the spiny branches. Beside her, stretched against the rock wall, lay a young man, his eyes closed, breathing raggedly. He had a bloodied bandage around his chest and his face was deathly pale.

  ‘Come in and welcome,’ the second woman said. Her face was lined with tiredness, though her brown eyes were bright. ‘It’s a bad time to be out on the road: there are murderers about. If you came through the hills, you’ll have seen what they did to our village.’

  Her name was Wyn, she told them, and the young man beside her was her son, Reinhard. ‘He’s sleeping, to recover his strength,’ she said, but Elspeth saw Eolande, who had squatted down near the young man, catch Cluaran’s eye and shake her head very slightly.

  The armed men had come down the eastern road the day before, Wyn told them: a horde of them, shouting and singing. There were rumours of a foreign army in the area, but when these men left the road, trampling on the freshly sown fields, and attacked their walls, the villagers heard them shouting to each other in Dansk.

  ‘The men went out to stop them,’ she said, her face still drawn with horror at the memory. ‘There was some talk . . . the villains were shouting at our men to join them . . . and then they ran at them with their axes and swords.’

  Most of the men were dead; her husband among them. The old folk, women and children had run for the hills while the murderers were setting fire to their houses, but she and her neighbour Sigrid had stayed to help some of the wounded escape.

  ‘We saw four or five get away,’ she said. ‘And we brought Reinhard with us.’ She turned to Cathbar. ‘Did you pass by our village? Were those madmen still there? Was anyone stirring?’

  ‘No sign of life that I could see,’ Cathbar answered gravely. ‘I’m sorry, mistress, that we did not stop to see if there were any there to help. We were following a companion of our own who was kidnapped – maybe by the same men.’

  ‘Not by them,’ the younger woman, Sigrid, said sharply. ‘They were like wild dogs, not men. They wouldn’t take prisoners.’

  Wyn was sitting upright. ‘We should go back,’ she said. ‘If the murderers are really gone, our neighbours will be returning – there’ll be so much to do.’

  ‘You’re a fool.’

  It was Eolande’s voice. The Fay woman gazed stony-eyed at Wyn over the young man’s unconscious form. ‘What good can you do?’ she demanded. ‘Lay out the dead? They’re lost to you! Your town is lost . . . your husband . . . What good is it to do anything?’

  ‘What good would it do to stop?’ the woman retorted. ‘If my neighbours and friends have lost their men, they’ll see them laid out decent, and at peace. And they’re not all dead!’ she added fiercely, reaching out to stroke her son’s forehead.

  Eolande stared at her a moment longer, then rose to her knees. ‘He soon will be,’ she murmured, and pushed her way out through the thorny thicket.

  Cluaran threw a look of apology at the woman and followed his mother outside. Elspeth saw her own horror mirrored on Cathbar’s face. Wyn bent over her son, her shoulders shaking, while the younger woman glared at them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elspeth stammered. ‘She didn’t mean . . . We’d better go.’ She took Wulf by the hand and dragged the child after her through the leaves.

  ‘How could you say such a thing?’ Cluaran was demanding.

  ‘He could not hear,’ Eolande said dully. ‘He’s gone beyond our voices. And why should she give herself hope, when there is none?’

  ‘There’s always hope,’ Cluaran insisted. ‘A skilled healer could bring him back.’ His voice fell. ‘There was a time when you would have tried.’

  ‘There would be no point.’ Eolande sounded almost pleading now. ‘She’s lost everything – and the boy would likely die, whatever I could do. Why keep fighting?’

  ‘Would you say that if your own son lay there wounded?’ Wyn had followed them out of the cave. ‘Will you let him die, knowing that you might have saved him?’ Her face was blotched with tears, but she held Eolande’s gaze, not letting her look away. The Fay woman twisted her hands.

  ‘I . . . I have some skills I might try,’ she admitted at last. ‘But there is so little hope...’

  ‘Won’t you at least try?’ Wyn broke in. ‘Do you think I’d turn away any hope – so much as a feather’s worth? I’ll fight for Reinhard while there’s breath in my body.’

  ‘But if he should die,’ Eolande whispered.

  The woman’s eyes blazed. ‘Then I’ll fight for my neighbours, and for their children. What else is there to do?’

  Eolande closed her eyes for a moment, then let her hands fall. Slowly, she raised her head to look at Wyn, and when she spoke her voice was clear.

  ‘I will try,’ she said.

  Chapter Nine

  They carried Edmund by his hands and feet, with a sack tied over his head.

  It made no difference to his sight, of course. Even as he flailed and kicked, he was reaching for the eyes of one of his captors to see where they were taking him: away from the road and deeper into the hills. The filthy rag in his mouth was choking him. As he tried to spit it out, he cast his sight behind him, back to the camp. He had always recoiled from using his skill on his own companions, but now, for an instant, he borrowed Cathbar’s eyes, and saw Eolande running towards him, weeping.

  He managed to get rid of the gag, took a deep breath and yelled with all his strength.

  ‘Help! Cathbar! I’m here...’

/>   Something hit him hard in the stomach. At the same time the sacking was drawn tighter over his mouth and nose. Winded and gasping, he kicked out more violently and heard one of the men curse as they broke into a run. Edmund hung between them, jolted at every step, his mouth full of sacking and his head swimming with the smell of mouldy grain.

  He did not know how long they carried him. The foul air inside the sack sickened him and he could not draw enough breath into his lungs. He tried to borrow the sight of one of the men, but all he could see was the rocky ground ahead, and his vision was beginning to blur. He flailed his trapped arms as the men began to climb. The grip on one arm loosened suddenly and he fell, the side of his head hitting the ground with a violent blow. He lost his hold on his captor’s eyes, and darkness closed over him.

  He woke from a confused dream of fire and bloodshed. He was lying on the ground, and for a moment he felt pure panic, not knowing where he was or how he had got there. The figures from his dream still filled his mind: men and women sprawled on the ground, red-lit by the flames burning their homes. He opened his mouth to cry out – but the cry died unspoken when he felt rough cloth over his face.

  Memory flooded back. Edmund’s head throbbed where he had hit it; he tried vainly to bring his hands up and realised that they were tied together. So were his feet. He could hear voices now: his captors, sitting and talking a little way away from him. He sent out his sight cautiously towards them and saw four bearded men, lounging at their ease on a quiet hillside: grey stone and thin, yellowed grass, with patches of green further down. Edmund suppressed a groan. They were resting: they must be confident that they had thrown off the pursuit. He was alone.

  The men talked in low voices, in Dansk, but with a strange, nasal accent that made it difficult to hear what they were saying. Edmund made out a few words: ‘boy’; ‘our pay’; ‘by noon’. One of them grunted and rose to his feet, and the man whose eyes he was borrowing turned to look at a heap of rags and ropes on the ground nearby. The heap shifted – and Edmund hurriedly regained his own sight as heavy footsteps crunched towards him.