Warrior of Woden

by Matthew Harffy

  "We will return before harvest, Eadgyth. Do not fear."

  "The winter will be long and food is always scarce ere spring comes."

  "Do you hear that, men?" Beobrand bellowed, startling the people of the hall with his sudden shout. "We ride at dawn. We will seek out the cowards who attacked our home, and we will kill them and be back before the reaping. There may be fewer mouths to feed now, but there are Mercians to slay before the harvest."

  Chapter 53

  Beobrand wiped the rainwater from his face and surveyed the horizon. He saw no movement in the valley to the south. The hills in the distance were hazed by the rain that had fallen constantly for the last two days.

  "Any sign of them?" asked Bearn, also peering into the distance.

  Beobrand swung around in his saddle, looking behind them, back into the north. The clouds were black, and the wind drove the cold rain into his face. In the valley below, on the old road, his warband travelled on. He saw nobody else abroad on such a day. Most men would be in their halls. Men who rode in this rain did so out of necessity. Men who journeyed in such weather were up to mischief.

  Or in search of revenge.

  "I see nobody but us on this path," Beobrand said.

  "You think the plan will work?" asked Bearn.

  Beobrand cast him a sidelong glance.

  "If the gods and wyrd will it," he replied. "I trust Attor. I know of no-one better at reading sign."

  Bearn grunted. Beobrand knew Bearn didn't much like Attor, but there was no questioning the man's tracking skills.

  When they had left Stagga, they had returned to Ubbanford just before the rain had begun to fall. Attor had walked around Ubbanford, kneeling from time to time, pressing his hand into depressions in the earth, examining patches of ground that looked like any other to Beobrand. He had taken so long that the men had grown restless and impatient.

  "We are wasting time here," Ulf had snapped at the tracker. "The bastards who killed my boy are riding ever further from this place."

  Beobrand understood the man's anguish, he too felt the pressure of time passing. In his mind's eye he could see Halga and his warband making their way southward, towards Mercia, and sanctuary. But Beobrand needed to know what they would face when they ran the Mercians to ground.

  And they needed a plan.

  Eventually, Attor had come to him. He had read the tracks and had a proposal.

  Beobrand had thought it a good one.

  Now, sitting astride Sceadugenga next to Bearn on the hill, drenched beneath a leaden sky, he began to question his decision to send Attor, Cynan and eight others away. His mind tugged at the memory of Acennan riding away from the main body of his warband. Beobrand spat. He could not dwell on such things. The plan was good.

  "Attor will send word soon," he said, forcing confidence into his voice. Bearn nodded and the two of them rode down to rejoin the horsemen in the valley below.

  It continued to rain and the men trudged on through the day in grim silence. Soon after they had halted for a brief rest, there was a sudden commotion in the rear ranks. Beobrand tensed, reaching for Hrunting, before sighing in relief to see a lone rider galloping through the sheets of rain. It was Cynan.

  The Waelisc rider brought his mount to a skidding halt before Beobrand. Cynan was mud-spattered and as wet as though he had swum in his clothes, but he still rode with an elegance and control Beobrand could never hope to know.

  "Well met, lord," Cynan said, his tone serious, but with the edge of excitement Beobrand recognised in those men most naturally suited to warfare. He knew that feeling well. The thrill of impending battle.

  "What news?" Beobrand asked.

  "We found them easily enough. It was as Attor said it would be. They number a score of men, and they have two heavily laden carts with them. Filled with your treasure, I'd wager."

  "Where are they?"

  "On Deira Stræt. They would be slow enough without this rain, but as it is, they are progressing at the pace of a snail."

  Beobrand frowned.

  "And they ride openly on the road?"

  "Aye, they have made no attempt to conceal themselves, not that they could with those carts. But no, they ride as if they were Northumbrians."

  The brashness of Halga's raid smacked of treachery.

  "Well, we will show them what happens when they meet some Northumbrians, won't we lads?"

  The gesithas let out a desultory cheer.

  "And they did not spot you, Cynan?"

  "No lord, we have been as invisible as wraiths. And this weather has helped."

  "How long until they reach the Wall?" Beobrand judged their own position. They were on a road less-travelled, but without carts to slow them, they would be at the Great Wall by dusk.

  Cynan shrugged.

  "Perhaps before nightfall tomorrow. Maybe the next day."

  "Good. We will be in position well before then. They will regret the day they crossed Beobrand of Ubbanford."

  Chapter 54

  It continued to rain, a seething, bitter downpour that soaked the land turning the earth to thick cloying mud. They arrived at the Wall near Hefenfelth as the sun coloured the clouds in the west red and gold, so that they looked like billows of smoke from a blazing bone-fire. Beobrand ordered the men to set up camp on the southern side of the massive stone barrier that stretched both east and west until it was lost to sight in the rain-misted distance. They traipsed, bedraggled and tired after the long ride, through the great, crumbling fortified gate. The tall structure provided them with some shelter, but they passed a miserable, chill night, as Beobrand forbade them from lighting fires.

  When Eadgard had grumbled, Beobrand had replied that it was better to be cold than to warn their enemy of their presence with trails of smoke. Eadgard had wrapped his sodden cloak about his shoulders and slouched back to sit with his back against the hewn rocks of the Wall. Nobody else questioned Beobrand's order.

  Beobrand had posted men on the crumbling ramparts with a warning that they were there to see, not to be seen.

  All the next day the rain fell. Few people travelled in such weather, but a couple of drovers with half a dozen cattle came up from the south, wishing to push their animals through the gate and on towards Stanfordham where they said Lord Merehwit was waiting for them for his daughter's wedding feast. Beobrand knew of Merehwit. He was a fat, choleric man, with a sour-faced wife and an unhappy household.

  Beobrand turned the men away. He would not have them warning Halga of what awaited him at the Wall.

  The older of the drovers raged at him.

  "If I don't get those beasts to Lord Merehwit in time, he'll likely string me up. I need to be paid, not killed by the likes of you," he said, clearly placing Beobrand into the same group of nobles as Lord Merehwit. The drover may well be right, but Beobrand would not allow him to pass. In the end, Beobrand gave the man a chunk of hack silver in exchange for the cows with a promise that he would deliver them to Merehwit as soon as he had concluded with his business at the Wall. The man had grumbled and groaned, but had snatched up the silver quickly enough. The younger of the two men had gawped at the shiny metal in the older man's hands.

  "That is so much silver, pa," he had said, mouth agape. "More than I ever did hope to see in this life."

  The old man had cuffed him hard about the head and shoved him away from the warriors and the Wall.

  "When we have done with the Mercian scum and can safely light a fire, we will slaughter one of these kine and feast our victory," Beobrand had told the men and that had cheered them for a spell.

  All that long day, as the rain blurred the distance, Beobrand paced and fretted. He climbed up onto the Wall and gazed out northward. He had sent Cynan back to join Attor and to tell him they would be waiting. Looking over to the north-east, Beobrand scanned the dense woodland of aspen and oak. There was no sign of the men who hid there. The forest lay someway distant from the gate. The men who had built this fortification had cleared the land all
around so that they would never be taken by surprise. Some shrubs and trees had sprung up over the generations since they had left Albion, but their mark on the land was yet clearly evident.

  The plan was simple, but relied on timing. He had placed Bearn in charge of the warriors in the trees. The remainder of the men, some fifteen strong, were with him behind the Wall.

  Beobrand clutched his mutilated hand to the Thunor's hammer at his throat.

  Thunor, please grant me victory this day. I will give you blood and mayhem. Woden, All-father, I offer to you the lives of my enemies.

  A sudden bluster of wind shook his heavy, water-logged cloak and he realised it had stopped raining. He wondered whether the gods truly cared for anything that men did. When he had left Stagga, Coenred had surprised him. He had pulled Beobrand to one side and offered him his Christ god's blessing. Then, as Beobrand had pulled his cloak about him, ready to step into the rain that had started to fall in the night, the young monk had clutched at his arm.

  "Find them, Beo," he'd said, the intensity of his emotion causing him to shake.

  Beobrand had nodded, his face grim.

  "I will."

  "Find them," Coenred had repeated, "and…"

  Beobrand had paused, waiting for Coenred to find the words.

  "Avenge Gothfraidh," he'd said at last. And then, as if the words had hurt him, Coenred had let out a sob and fled back into the dark of the hall.

  Beobrand had stared after him for a time. To hear Coenred asking for revenge saddened Beobrand almost as much as anything else that had befallen him in the last weeks. Coenred was ever forgiving, always seeking peace. Beobrand had grown to expect Coenred's reprobation whenever he spoke of battles or vengeance. For the monk to speak of revenge was to feel the solid earth shifting like a quagmire beneath his feet. Nothing was as it should be.

  A flock of birds fluttered into the sky in the distance, where the road came from between two bluffs. Beobrand fixed his gaze on the road but he could not make out anything. His eyes were not the best.

  "Fraomar," he barked, "what do you see there?"

  Fraomar shaded his eyes with his hand and stared for a long while before turning to his lord and nodding.

  "They are coming," he said.

  "Down from the Wall," Beobrand shouted. He looked at the sinking sun in the west, gauging how much daylight was left. Gods, he prayed that the plan would work. Scrambling down from the ramparts, he snatched up his helm from where he had left it beneath his saddle, out of the rain.

  "Prepare for slaughter, my brave gesithas," he shouted at the men who were busy shrugging on their rusting byrnies and hefting their black shields. "Ready your weapons. They will drink of Mercian blood before night falls."

  *

  After readying themselves for battle, Beobrand and his gesithas stood in the shadow of the Wall and waited. As is so often the way, time seemed to pass more slowly as the moment to fight approached. They had been standing for so long, shivering from the damp clothes cooling against their skin, that Beobrand began to wonder if somehow Halga had scented the trap and had outsmarted them.

  Beobrand closed his eyes and pictured the land north of the Wall. The Roman road passing between the two hills. The woodland where his men were hidden. The Wall and the fortified opening where once a great gate would have stood, but now yawned open and inviting. What had he missed? He checked again that Hrunting was safely in its scabbard and that his seax was secure in its sheath, then rubbed absently at his right leg. He recalled how Halga's hunting dog had leapt out of the forest in Mercia and clamped its jaws onto his thigh. He had been blinded by his desire for vengeance then. Had he been blinded again?

  "What do you see?" he called up to Fraomar. He had left the keen-eyed man on the Wall, where he watched from a crack in the masonry.

  For a moment, Fraomar did not reply and small teeth of worry gnawed at Beobrand.

  "Fraomar," he hissed.

  "Soon, lord," came the whispered response. "The Mercians are close. Attor and the others have just shown themselves. They are riding towards them along the road. The Mercians are in confusion."

  Fraomar fell silent again and Beobrand tried to imagine what the young warrior could see. He was tempted to poke his head out and look for himself, but if the Mercians saw him, they would get wind of the ambush, and their defeat would be all the more difficult. He waited, breathing through his mouth and straining to hear any sound that might filter through the rock of the Wall and give some clue as to what occurred to the north.

  Everything relied now on Bearn's timing.

  Beobrand held his breath.

  Woden, bring me victory and I will heap the corpses in your honour.

  "Bearn has come from the wood," came the excited whisper from Fraomar.

  There was a long pause. Beobrand gripped the Thunor hammer amulet at his throat so tightly that his knuckles showed white in the shadow of the Wall.

  What was happening? No sound reached him. Nothing to indicate whether the trap was going to work.

  "They've seen them." Another pause as Fraomar peered through the gap in the stonework. "The Mercians are not standing to fight. They are hurrying towards the gate."

  Beobrand let out a long breath and then filled his lungs with the cool, wet, earthy air. He offered up a silent prayer to Woden then. The All-father was ever thirsty for lifeblood. Beobrand would give him a glut of the stuff before sunset.

  "You know what to do, lads," he said, his voice low. Around him, his gesithas tensed, flexing muscles that had grown stiff from inactivity. Ulf caught his gaze and nodded urgently, his eyes wide and crazed with the prospect of spilling the blood of those who had taken the life of his beloved son.

  Fraomar dropped down from the ramparts and scooped up his spear and shield from where they had been propped against the stone.

  "How far are they from the gate?" Beobrand asked him.

  Before Fraomar could answer, the first of the Mercians clattered through the opening in the Wall. And the chaos and joy of battle swept over Beobrand like a wave.

  Chapter 55

  Beobrand waited until several Mercian riders had passed through the gateway before giving the order to attack. Each of the horsemen reined in their steed, clearly readying themselves to dismount. The sixth rider must have seen the warriors waiting stealthily in the shadows behind the Wall, or perhaps he saw something in the faces of the lead horsemen who were casting about them, eyes wide in surprise, beginning to realise that they had ridden into a trap. Whatever the reason, the sixth man yanked the reins of his stallion hard, turning the mount in a scraping slew of mud. He was quick-witted this one, and a good rider too, for he kept his seat.

  "It's a trap!" he shouted at the same instant that Beobrand bellowed for his warband to attack.

  "Now!"

  At the order, his gesithas surged forward from both sides of the gateway. They bore their spears high and the sharp points found the flesh of beast and man alike as the Mercian horsemen attempted to turn and flee. The screams of wounded horses were drowned beneath the roaring battle-cry of Beobrand's black-shielded killers. Beobrand was closest to the gate's opening and he sprang forward, thrusting the leaf-shaped blade of his spear at the sixth rider, who, for an eye-blink had his back to the lord of Ubbanford. The Mercian's horse's hooves slipped and skidded, churning up the mud beneath the Wall. The beast struggled to gain purchase on the wet ground and almost toppled over. Its eyes were white-rimmed as it sent up great splashing clods of muck into the air. Beobrand marvelled at the rider's skill. Most men would have been unseated by such a manoeuvre, and yet this man remained atop his mount and would surely have escaped and ridden away had not Beobrand's probing spear found the nape of his neck. The steel point, bearing the full weight of Beobrand's charge, entered the man's flesh as easily as if it were smoke. The metal sliced through sinew and bone and instantly the Mercian was dead, a limp corpse where a heartbeat before had ridden a vital warrior filled with vigour. Beobrand twisted his s
pear and pulled it back. Blood gushed red and hot from the man's neck as he tumbled from his terrified horse. The animal, its hooves finally gripping in the mud, sprang away in the direction from which it had come. Beobrand let it go.

  On the south side of the Wall the other five Mercians were all dead or dying. One lay pinned beneath his horse. A broken spear jutted from the animal's chest and it bellowed and thrashed its legs in agony. As Beobrand watched, Fraomar plunged his spear into the trapped Mercian's chest.

  Another horse, riderless, eyes rolling in terror, galloped towards the gate. Beobrand leapt aside to allow it to pass.

  Judging that his gesithas were in control, Beobrand turned his attention northward.

  Closer than he had imagined, barely a spear's throw distant, two carts lumbered, pulled behind brawny, hang-horned oxen. Beyond them, in the distance, Beobrand recognised Attor, Cynan and the small band of riders who had trailed Halga's steps all the way from Ubbanford. Off to Beobrand's right, and further away still, galloped the band of warriors led by Bearn. The thin sounds of their hollering war-cries reached Beobrand where he stood in the gateway.

  Halga's men were in disarray. They milled about the carts, unsure of what to do. They had fallen into the trap perfectly. Believing themselves pursued from the north and with the defensible position of the gate in the Great Wall invitingly close to hand, they had hurried to make their stand there. But now, having seen their comrades slain by Beobrand's hidden force, they were confused, unsure how to proceed.

  But these were trained killers, not brigands that could be easily frightened. Halga's gesithas were proud spear-men who had stood in battles in the service of their lord and their king. Their shock and surprise would not last long. Beobrand's gaze fell upon the bright red beard of the giant who led the men. Along with the remainder of his men, he had reined in his mount close to the waggons. Halga, his eyes burning with fury, stared back at Beobrand. He may have been caught momentarily off guard, but Halga showed no sign of fear.