When the road had first been laid down it no doubt ran through open country, and if it met with forests Oswin imagined that the Romans had cleared the woods away. This land was home to the savage Britons then, and the Romans would not have left them cover from which to stage an ambush.
But no more. Now stands of trees had grown up along the road, some mere patches of wood, some all but forests.
The road at the bottom of the rise on which Oswin and his men were waiting was engulfed by a quarter mile of such forest before emerging again and rising up to where the shire reeve sat his horse. It was why he was there.
They waited for some time longer, waited until the riders who road ahead of the wagon train disappeared from view in the woods below, and then the first of the wagons was similarly swallowed up, and then the next behind it. Oswin had a sudden fear that he had waited too long.
“Come on,” he said to the men behind him. He kicked the flanks of his horse and the animal, startled after having remained motionless for so long, leapt forward, heading down the hill at a trot. Oswin could hear the others following behind.
They entered the woods at the bottom of the hill, the light of the overcast day yielding to the deeper gloom of the forest. Here was one of the few places that the road made a long, gentle curve, and that prevented Oswin from seeing more than a couple hundred feet ahead. But that was no matter, because anyone approaching from the opposite direction would be equally blind until it was too late.
He reined his horse to a stop once again and heard the others behind him do the same. He looked left and right, his eyes piercing the woods as best they could, but he could see nothing. He strained his ears. He could hear the creaking of the carts not too far away down the road. He could hear birds in the trees. Nothing else.
Good…
It was not long after they reached their position that the first of the riders appeared around the bend, a couple hundred feet away. Oswin saw them rein to a stop, surprised to see men on the road, men who seemed to be waiting for them. He could see the riders turn and confer with one another, and Oswin could well imagine the discussion they were having.
Finally one of them wheeled his horse around and disappeared, heading back toward the unseen wagons.
That’s right , Oswin thought. Back you go, tell the wagons to stop where they are.
The other two riders continued on, closing with Oswin and his men. They were fifty feet away when Oswin knew for certain that one of the men was Bryning, the captain of Nothwulf’s hearth-guard. Which was no more a surprise than any of it.
Bryning approached to twenty feet distance and stopped. “Oswin,” he said, with a touch of surprise, a touch of wariness. He would have no reason to fear the shire reeve, though neither would he have expected to encounter him at that place. “What business have you here?”
“Anything that happens in Dorset is my business. That’s why I’m the shire reeve, and not, say, the privy reeve.” That got a short laugh from one of the men behind him, but not Bryning.
“And I’m on Nothwulf’s business,” Bryning said, an edge of uncertainty in his voice. “We have a few carts back on the road, and we’re accompanying them to Winchester. There’s no toll here, I’m certain, and even if there was, Nothwulf pays no tolls in this shire.”
“I see,” Oswin said. “What do you carry, that you need such an armed guard? Do you think these roads unsafe?”
“What I carry is Nothwulf’s business, not yours,” Bryning said. Oswin could tell the surprise was wearing off, and Bryning was asserting himself. Bryning was no coward, of that Oswin had no doubt, and his men outnumbered Oswin’s. As far as Bryning could tell.
“I’m not so sure this isn’t my business,” Oswin said, and then, as if he had given a signal, a man screamed from somewhere down the road, somewhere back where the wagons were hidden from view. It was a scream of surprise and agony, the kind of scream a man might make if he had been shot with an arrow by an archer crouching unseen in the woods. Which, Oswin knew, was exactly what it was.
The scream died off as abruptly as it came, and there was a moment of silence, a heartbeat or two, no more, and then chaos, as if a minor battle had erupted just beyond their sight. Men shouted, horses stamped and they could hear weapons being drawn. Someone else screamed, the same sort of scream: shock and pain.
Bryning had turned toward the sound and now he turned back. His calm of a moment before was gone, and in its place Oswin could see confusion and rage. Mostly rage, he guessed, because it would not have taken Bryning long to understand what was going on.
Oswin drew his sword and Bryning did the same and Oswin thought Bryning was going to charge, but he did not. Instead he pulled his horse’s head around, spinning the animal in place and kicking its flanks hard, while the man at Bryning’s side did the same. Bryning might have wished to thrust a sword through the shire reeve, but his duty was to protect the wagons at any cost, and that was what he would attempt to do. And, Oswin knew, he would fail.
Sword in hand, Oswin spurred his horse to a run, flying down the road on Bryning’s heels, his men pounding behind him. The sound of shouting and the unseen clash of weapons and the stamp of horses seemed to build to a high point and then die away as Oswin followed Bryning around the bend.
The first of the wagons was there, the oxen pulling it standing motionless and dumb, as if waiting patiently for the men to finish with their foolishness. Two riderless horses were prancing around, the once-mounted warriors sprawled on the hard-packed road, arrows standing like banner staffs from their chests. On the carter’s seat the wagon’s driver lay slumped on his side.
Bryning did not pause over his dead but raced on past, charging back along the road down which he had just come. Oswin stayed on his heels as best he could, but Bryning’s horse was fast and the distance began to open.
“Stop him! Stop that bastard!” Oswin shouted to whoever might hear, whoever was in a position to help. He saw an arrow streak through the air and embed itself in a wagon’s side, but Bryning had long since ridden past.
Oswin reined his horse to a stop, as did his men, but Oswin shook his head and pointed up the road and shouted in his anger, “After that son of a bitch! Get him! Kill him, or not, I don’t care, but stop the bastard!”
The orders were unnecessary. Oswin’s men knew what to do. They did not hesitate as they raced off after the fleeing Bryning, and Oswin paid them no more attention. They were good men, reliable. They would bring Bryning’s bleeding corpse back to him.
The shire reeve turned his horse in a half circle. A dozen more of Oswin’s men were moving around the wagons, seaxes in hand, bows slung over their shoulders. They had been hidden in the woods, waiting for the wagon train, while Oswin and the others had been waiting at the crest of the hill. They crouched among the trees until Oswin forced the carts to stop at the place they had arranged for them to stop. Then they let go a flight of arrows, too fast for the eye to follow and utterly unexpected. Two arrows each, and then they had attacked with their blades, but Oswin doubted there had been many left standing by then.
The fight had been short and it had been one sided and it had been exactly as Oswin had planned.
He slipped down off his horse. He felt the muscles in his legs protest as he walked slowly back along the line of wagons. He stopped at the second from the end. The driver had fallen forward, bent nearly double, an arrow sticking out of his back, a great blossom of blood soaking his tunic. The arrow had struck at such an angle as to drive itself right into his heart, a near instant death.
You’re a lucky bastard, Oswin thought and he pulled himself up and stood on the seat beside the dead man. The bed of the cart was fully loaded, a heavy canvas cloth covering the lot of it. Oswin pulled a knife from his sheath, cut one of the cords that held the cloth in place, and peeled it back.
Barrels. The cart was loaded with barrels. Wine, Oswin guessed. Good wine. Nothwulf would not send anything less than that for the pleasure of King Æthelwulf.
Doing so would be counterproductive.
He pulled the canvas back further and inspected the top of each barrel. Then he stepped onto the side of the cart and worked his way around until he could see the bottoms. No marks, nothing to indicate the wine had come from Nothwulf. That surprised Oswin. An oversight. But a good one, as far as he was concerned.
He hopped down from the wagon and continued forward, making a cursory inspection of each wagon as he passed. More barrels, and also some stacks of bags made of course fabric. Flour, rye, oats, he imagined. He stopped by the lead wagon. Strewn around the vehicle were four of Bryning’s men-at-arms, all quite dead. It seemed they had been gathered around that one wagon in particular, giving it special protection. Oswin was not surprised.
He climbed up onto the wagon. The wagon driver had made it to the far end of the seat before the arrows in his neck and chest had put an end to him. Now he lay half-slumped and motionless over the edge of the wagon. Oswin spared him a glance, no more, then once again drew his knife, cut the canvas tarpaulin free and peeled it back. There were bolts of fine cloth beneath, and smaller barrels that contained some luxury or other to grace a king’s table. And a small, elaborately decorated casket made of polished wood and tricked out with silver filigree.
“Ah, there you are,” Oswin said. He picked up the casket. It was disproportionately heavy, a good sign. He tilted the lid back. The casket was filled with mostly coins, some gold, most silver, that gave off a dull gleam in the muted light. It was a significant horde. Oswin did not know exactly how wealthy Nothwulf was, but he guessed this had put a pretty big hurt on his treasury.
Holding the casket in one hand, Oswin extracted a half dozen coins and tucked them in a purse hanging from his belt, then shut the lid and returned the casket to its spot in the wagon’s bed. Next to the casket was a leather pouch. Oswin lifted it gently and flipped the cover back. There was only one document inside, which Oswin extracted, turning it over in his hands. On the face of it was written in a flourishing hand, His Most Benevolent Majesty, King Æthelwulf, Beloved Sovereign of Wessex . On the back side of the letter was a wax seal, and pressed into the wax was Nothwulf’s device, a shield, hart, and boar, entwined with vines.
Oswin broke the seal and unfolded the letter. My beloved Majesty King Æthelwulf, most benevolent sovereign… he read, his eyes moving quickly over the familiar sycophancy and on to the substance of the letter. In truth it really didn’t matter what the letter said, but Oswin was curious.
With the tragic and sorrowful death of my brother, Merewald, one who was revered by his people and much esteemed by me, I ask now how I might best serve Your Majesty in my office of Ealdorman of Dorsetshire…
Oswin smiled. “‘My office of Ealdorman of Dorsetshire,’” he said to himself. “Presumptuous bastard, aren’t you? And I have no doubt you’re inconsolably distraught over your idiot brother’s death. Well, we’ll see about your office.”
He tucked Nothwulf’s letter into a leather pouch of his own, which hung on his belt, and drew another letter out. It was very much like the one Nothwulf had written, but the hand that had addressed it to King Æthelwulf was more feminine, and the seal showed the boar and a cross of Devonshire. This Oswin put in Nothwulf’s pouch and replaced the pouch beside the casket.
He felt the wagon move under him and he looked up. Two of his men were dragging the body of the driver off the seat. Oswin looked down the road as far as he could see. Others were hauling the corpses of Bryning’s men, both waggoneers and men-at-arms, off into the woods, where they would be lost in the bracken. They might have given the men Christian burials if they had time, and if Oswin cared in the least, which he did not.
Oswin hopped down from the wagon and strode back down the road as his men came thrashing their way out of the woods. The men-at-arms, part of Merewald’s old hearth-guard, were mounting their horses, while the others whose job it was to drive the wagons were climbing up onto the seats and picking up the oxen’s reins.
A man named Alnoth, who had led the ambush, approached him now. “All of Bryning’s dead are off the road, and I don’t reckon they’ll be found,” he said.
Oswin nodded. The road was not much traveled, and those who did travel it were not much inclined to start wandering through the woods. The foxes and wolves and crows would take care of Bryning’s men before any human eyes lit on them.
“Those two you sent after Bryning, they’re not back,” Alnoth continued.
“Doesn’t matter,” Oswin said. “They’ll catch Bryning and do what they must.” Oswin did not think Bryning would let himself be taken alive, and that was fine. Preferable, actually. “Then they’ll catch up to you.”
Alnoth nodded. “Very well.”
“ Very well, indeed,” Oswin said. “Now, get on your way. It’s a bloody long trip to Winchester, you know.”
Chapter Sixteen
I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers.
I am looked down upon by many.
St. Patrick’s Confessio
Brother Bécc mac Carthach thought himself a humble man. But he also saw how such a thought could lead a man into danger. To consider one’s self humble might well be an act of hubris. But there was no way around it. He could not eschew humility for fear of that. There was nothing he could do but seek authentic humility and let the Lord decide how successful he was.
Part of authentic humility, a large part, was admitting he was wrong. Which he did. And admitting that Faílbe mac Dúnlaing had been right, which he did as well.
The men were indeed spent, as Faílbe had insisted. They had no fight left in them. Bécc realized that as he made his way back along the path, back toward the deserted monastery at Beggerin. He expected to be challenged, to hear a voice call out to him, some indication that someone was watching the approaches for a possible counterstroke by the heathens. But there was nothing. Even the insects and night creatures were still.
Bécc did not realize he had reached the remnants of the army until he came upon the first of the dozing men. He could just barely make out their forms in the dim light, sprawled on the beaten earth near the outer wall of the monastery. If they had been dead, Bécc would not have been surprised. They looked no different from dead men.
They’re soldiers, and the call of battle drives them , Bécc thought. Not the call of God . And that was why these men had collapsed in their exhaustion, while he, Bécc was ready to launch another attack on the heathens. But even Bécc in his passion understood he could not renew the battle on his own, and he could not get these men to fight until they had slept and eaten and dressed their wounds.
Not all the men were asleep. Bécc saw a figure coming toward him, a phantom in the dark, and his hand fell on the hilt of his sword. Then he recognized Father Niall, the young priest.
“Brother Bécc!” he said, speaking softly and making the sign of the cross. “God be praised! When the others came back and you and Lord Faílbe were not with them, I feared the worst.”
Bécc grunted. “Faílbe is dead,” he said. “But I am here.”
“Oh, my dear Lord…” Niall said. “You’re quite certain? It’s too late for me to administer the last rites?”
“Too late,” Bécc said. “I saw him die.”
Brother Bécc felt no great remorse about killing Faílbe mac Dúnlaing. It was not so different from killing heathens—both were obstacles to God’s plan, and any such obstacle must be eliminated. But he would have to confess the killing, nonetheless. He was certain that his actions were justified in the eyes of God, and not sins that required forgiving, but again it was God, and not he, who would decide.
He looked at Father Niall and considered asking the man to hear his confession, then and there. Niall, of course, would tell no one what he heard. Such was the sanctity of confession. But it would still be a terrible burden for the young man to carry, and Bécc knew the priest would never again look on him the way he did now, with love and respect. And that would only b
e another obstacle in the way of his mission to drive the heathens from those shores.
“What is it, Brother Bécc?” Father Niall asked, and Bécc realized he had been staring wordlessly at the man while those thoughts played out in his head.
“Nothing, Father, nothing,” Bécc said. “I’m very weary, is all. The men are asleep? Have any run off?”
“I don’t know for certain, Brother,” Niall said, “but I don’t think so. Those who came back from the beach, they’ve gone no further than this place. I don’t know if they would even have the strength to go further.”
Bécc nodded. “There’s nothing more to be done now, at least not until they’ve recovered their strength. You get some rest, and I will, too.”
Niall gave Bécc a weak smile. “I’ll confess, I’m weary, too, though I’ve not had a night of battle like you and the others.”
Bécc put his hand on Niall’s shoulder, a gesture of genuine affection. “Every day you fight for the Word of God,” he said. “And that’s the greater fight, and the more important. Now, go.”
Niall smiled again, turned and headed back up the path, off to find some place to sleep, Bécc guessed. Bécc himself had no intention of sleeping. There was still an enemy out there, one that might muster the will to launch an attack, unlikely though that was. Bécc would not be caught unawares.
He turned and headed back the way he had come, a quarter mile or so from the sleeping men-at-arms. If the heathens attacked, then he was far enough that he could give sufficient warning, and close enough that his voice might be heard.
Satisfied with his position, Bécc dropped to his knees and pulled his sword, holding it in front of him, the hilt and the cross guard and blade serving as a makeshift crucifix. He made the sign of the cross and began to pray.
It was some time until the sun came up, illuminating the ceiling of cloud to the east, and Bécc remained in prayer until that time, until he could just barely see the ridge of dunes in the distance, God’s own rampart between him and the heathens.
A Vengeful Wind: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 8) Page 15
