Daughters Of The Storm (28 page)

The shouting continued. Wylm picked up a word here and there on the wind. They were arguing over the spoils of a raid. The thought that he would have to somehow make his way to see a raider king made his stomach hollow. Was he just to stroll up and greet the king of such men? Surely his throat would be slit before his greeting had left his tongue.

First, survive this close call. Second, get Eni to safety. Third ... the desire to run. The desire to leave all this behind him. But his mother was imprisoned at Bluebell's will. A good son would not run away.

The argument stopped and their footfalls on the road drew closer. Five of them in dirty clothes, with long beards and hair. As they passed, just one hundred feet away, he noticed one man had his hair tied in a long, tight plait. On the back of his neck, Wylm could see the tattoo of a raven.

Hakon's men. If, indeed, Hakon yet lived.

He opened his mouth to call out, but the words froze in his throat. It was not safe with Eni, he told himself. He was not prepared, he had not yet decided what words he would use, in their strange tongue, to explain himself.

But he knew he didn't call out because he was frightened.

They passed, and Wylm sat down heavily, his back against a tree trunk. The sun climbed higher and Eni sang a soft little song to himself. Wylm waited. Waited some more. Then when he was certain they would be safe, he grasped Eni's shoulder. ‘Time to keep moving,' he said.

Eni understood the intent if not the words. Wylm saddled his horse and soon they were on their way.

The wind freshened from the west as the day wore on, and they moved due west out of the shelter of trees. They stopped to eat at an exposed place where the lungs of the ocean exhaled upon them furiously. Once again, Wylm tried to get Eni to eat the leftover cold rabbit, but the boy didn't want food. They mounted the horse and kept moving. Salt and seaweed were thick in the air. Wylm became alarmed that they hadn't seen another human since the raiders that morning. Would he find an inn soon? Or even a hunter's cabin among the rocks and growling pines? Any sign of life?

The sun was moving into its low position in the sky when the vista opened up and he could see beyond wild rocky cliffs to the grey sea. And there, finally, was a village. A white-painted inn sat in the middle of it, with little crooked stone houses huddled around it. Laundry and fish hung in equal measure on long ropes between houses.

‘We are at the sea,' he told Eni.

But Eni could already smell it. He had lifted his nose to the wind and was wrinkling it curiously.

‘Do you think you'd like to live by the sea, Eni?' Wylm asked, and already his mind's eye was taken over by the fantasy. A cosy house, a warm maternal bosom, a wiry fisherman father, bleak weather outside the shutters, a warm fire ... then he wondered if the fantasy was for Eni or for himself. ‘I think you'll be happy here,' he muttered as he urged the horse forwards.

The alehouse was bright and full of folk and fire. Men who smelled of fish and seawater sat on long benches gulping drinks and laughing, while their wives chased fat children around or hung about their husbands' necks with shining faces. He had rarely been in such a happy place.

‘Sit here,' he said to Eni, finding a dark corner. ‘Now I must take your ring, but just for a day.' He gently reached for Eni's hand and the gold ring.

Eni snatched his hand back. ‘Bluebell,' he said.

‘Here,' Wylm said, withdrawing from his belt a trinket he had been carving over the last few days. He had taken a thick stick and turned it into a long, skinny rabbit. Eni's hand closed over it, feeling its contours eagerly.

‘The ring, Eni,' Wylm said. ‘Just for a day.'

Eni didn't even notice Wylm slipping the ring off his hand, so delighted was he with the rabbit-stick. Wylm pocketed the ring securely, then went to the hearthpit, where the alehouse wife was turning a spit of fat fish over the fire. ‘Hello,' he said.

She turned her plain, ruddy face to him. ‘Evening, sir.'

‘You are very busy tonight.'

‘The fishermen just came back. They've been away a week in deep water.'

Wylm looked around with fresh eyes. Yes, a celebration. That's where the sense of merriment arose from. ‘I need a room and a meal for the young lad and me,' he said.

She glanced over at Eni. ‘What's wrong with him?'

‘He's blind.'

‘Looks more than blind. I've seen a two-year-old playing with a stick like that, not a big boy who should have been sent to apprentice.'

Wylm felt a pang for Eni that he didn't expect. ‘He is as he is,' Wylm said, ‘and I need to find a good, caring home for him here. I have to travel a long way and for a long time.'

‘Good luck,' she said darkly. ‘If it can't catch a fish or bear a baby, it has no place in Græweall.' She indicated around her with a free hand. ‘The whole village is here. You can ask around if you like. But we are too small to support somebody who isn't able-bodied.'

Wylm scanned the room. Was there a couple without children? An older woman alone?

The alehouse wife's voice softened. ‘Go on, sit down. I'll bring you some food and ask a few questions for you. And I've got a room out the back for you and your lad if you don't mind sharing a bed.'

Wylm returned to his seat. Eni was on the floor now, playing with the rabbit-stick, heedless of how his long skinny legs and jutting elbows marked him as a boy too old for strange noises and playing on muddy rushes. Wylm watched him a while, thoughts turning over and over. What misplaced pity had brought him into this situation? He had killed the boy's father. He intended yet to extract revenge on Bluebell, the most famed warrior in the land. And here he was, minding a simple boy as though he were a softhearted woman. He should have killed the boy when he had the chance.

Curses. He
couldn't
kill the boy. He had been incapable of it. No matter that his heart welled with dark thoughts, he wasn't pitiless. How he longed to be pitiless.

The alehouse wife arrived with their meals — ale and fish and hot buttered beans — and said, ‘Old Florrie is going to come talk to you.'

‘Old Florrie?'

‘She's my husband's grandmother. She wants to meet your boy.'

Wylm nodded. Old Florrie would do. Once Eni was off his hands, he could get on with the next stage of his plans, unencumbered.

‘Come on, Eni, sit up at the table. Food.' He waved the plate under Eni's nose and the boy felt his way to his seat, carefully placing the rabbit-stick aside, and began eating with his fingers.

‘Can't you even use a spoon?' Wylm said, forcing the spoon into his hand.

Eni could use a spoon, once reminded to pick it up, but it was still a messy affair. Wylm gulped his ale and waited for the arrival of Old Florrie.

She was nothing like he expected. No warm bosom and soft smile. She was all bones and hard surfaces, cheeks like scythes and a cold glint in her eye. ‘Is this the boy?' she said, without further introduction.

‘Yes. His name is Eni.'

She grasped Eni by the chin and forced his face up so she could examine it. ‘He's blind, then?'

‘He can still get around very well.'

‘Boy, is that true? Can you still get around very well?'

Eni was silent, sightless eyes swimming. Florrie released him with a derisive sniff. ‘No, I'll not take him. Nobody here will take him. He's of no use.'

‘Perhaps a woman who's lost a child?'

‘We don't mourn dead children long here,' Florrie said. ‘I had six and only three lived. It's the way in these parts. If it's not the sea that swallows them, it's the creeping cold that gets in their chests.'

Wylm didn't notice that Eni's hand had crept across the table until he felt it slip under his own, looking for security. Anger boiled up inside him. Anger at Eni, at Florrie, at Bluebell, at the whole world for putting him in this situation.

But then he remembered the ring. And it all fell into place in his mind.

‘Never mind, then,' Wylm said to Florrie. ‘I'll keep the lad.'

Florrie shrugged and turned away. Wylm closed his hand over Eni's. ‘Never mind,' he said again, more softly. ‘I understand your true value, and I know an ally who might too.'

The raiders had been heading south, so that meant Wylm had to head south, retracing his steps. They were on foot, he on a horse. He could catch them. It was a grey morning when they set off, the fog had barely lifted and the seaweed smell in the air almost choked him. But he put Eni on his horse, the gold ring restored to the child's limp finger, and he rode hard and long.

A few hours back along the road, he stopped to rest the horse and give Eni a break. He stood by a narrow stream that ran over rocks, stretching his aching back and practising the sentence over and over in his head in the northern language. But no matter how he said it, it could be construed as an invitation to immediate and violent death. He changed the phrasing, hoped he had the words right. Said it over and over under his breath.

Wylm realised that there had been quiet for a while. He turned and scanned for Eni. Couldn't see him.

‘Eni?' he called, heading towards the trees. No doubt the boy was collecting twigs again. ‘Where have you got to?'

A rustle in the bushes.

Wylm paused, his left foot flexed as though to take another step. ‘Eni?' he said, hating the note of fear in his voice.

Then they were around him, five hefty men in leather and fur, emerging from behind trees he hadn't even suspected as hiding places. And one of them had Eni hard against him, hand over the child's mouth.

Wylm's lips tried to form words, but nothing would come out. White hot fear sheeted through him.

The biggest in the group leaned forwards, resting the edge of his axe against Wylm's shoulder. ‘Boo,' he said.

The raiders forced Wylm, hands bound, to march deeper into the glade, leaving his horse and pack behind. Every time he tried to speak, one of them would smack him around the head and shout, ‘Quiet!', so he did as he was told. Eni was being carried over a burly man's shoulders, crying quietly, every now and again saying the word ‘rabbit' mournfully and Wylm presumed he had lost his plaything. At length they came to an encampment, and Wylm realised he was in much deeper trouble than he could have imagined. With his eyes he counted twelve on the ground, sitting around fires, sharpening blades, fletching arrows. Who knew how many more were in tents, especially in the largest tent, which was painted with a raven insignia on a red sea.

‘Ragnar!' the man who held Wylm called, throwing Wylm onto the ground and putting a foot on his chest to stop him moving. ‘Come and see this.'

From the tent emerged a solid, muscular mass of a man with a giant red beard. To Wylm's surprise, the big man beckoned Ragnar not towards Wylm, but towards the boy, who stood uncertainly between them all.

The big man reached out and flipped Eni's arm into the air, showing Ragnar the ring.

Wylm saw his chance. ‘It is the ring of the royal family of Ælmesse,' he cried. ‘This child is the unacknowledged son of Bluebell the Fierce, the grandson of Æthlric Storm Bearer. I have brought him to you.'