Dawn Wind (20 page)

‘Come on, then, neighbours.’ Brand hitched his rough mantle more closely about him. ‘Come on, or the fish-folk beyond Cymenshore will reap it all.’

‘Fair shares for them that stays to watch the bank, though,’ somebody put in, and there was a general laugh.

‘Aye, fair shares, but they’ll be precious thin ones, if the fish-folk get there first.’

Men were already tugging their cloaks around them, plunging off into the wind and rain towards the promise of the wreck, and Owain found that he was one of them. Behind them he heard the harper laughing and urging them on, it might have been in savage mockery, as a huntsman urges on his hounds to the kill.

Then the gale swooped roaring between those who went and those who stayed, and they heard no more.

Clear of the shelter of the boatshed the wind leapt at them like a live thing, battering the breath back into their bodies. Owain leaned sideways, head down into the gusts. Low down in the east beyond the harbour bar, the first wan light was broadening. Owain saw the sea-beast shapes of the fishing boats pulled high up the keel-strand, the crouching land-beast shapes of the settlement barns and byres and house-places huddled under the thorn windbreaks, and beyond, half lost in the trailing curtains of rain, seeming perilously higher than the sodden land, the white menace of the sea.

They were heading down the long curve of the coast where the sand and shingle bar of the haven came sweeping in to the land. Now they were among the dunes; they kept to the landward side when they could, but even so the boom and crash of the surf was a thing to stun and deafen all the senses, and the ground shuddered underfoot as though the great rollers were the Hammer of Thor striving to pound the land into nothingness. When they came down to the Seal Strand at last, there was light enough to show them other dark figures there before them and that they had guessed aright as to where the ship would ground.

She was hard and fast on the rocks, a small coastal vessel, black against the white-combed seas around and beyond her. Mastless and already breaking up, she was so close inshore that they could see the men on board her. That was the appalling thing, Owain thought, that they were so near that one could see the men who were going to drown; little black clinging figures that did not seem real—But they
were
real, and they in their turn must be able to see the men on shore and the gleam of the lantern fading sickly, into the wild light of dawn. All so near, three or four spear-casts, maybe, not more, and there was nothing that one could do.

Steadily, remorselessly, the great waves were pitching on to the wreck—for she was no more than a wreck, now—and with each hammer-blow of the great swinging seas, something more of her would be smashed away, one less figure clinging to the tangled rigging. It was a horrible, a pitiful thing to see. Now she was just a black mass of beams and spars and tangled cordage, like the battered skeleton of some sea-monster long stranded on the rocks—yet with a few men clinging there still.

The men on shore were wading out as deeply as they dared, to catch the bales and wine-skins and tumbling spars that had begun to come ashore, before the undertow could snatch them out again. Quite suddenly, as though in answer to a summons that he neither understood nor questioned, Owain found that he had flung off his cloak and was wading out also. The low dazzle of a stormy sunrise was shining into his eyes; the savage undertow dragged at his legs and the shingle churned and shifted under his feet, and once down he would be done for; but he waded on, knee deep, thigh deep. Behind him he heard shouts of warning, but he paid no heed. He was waist deep now, he was lifted half off his feet, and next instant he was clinging to a rock slippery with green weed, the waves breaking clean over him.

A wine-skin bobbed past, dark and buoyant like a porpoise, but he let it go by and in a while saw it sucked out again. A seaman’s body swept by him, dim-seen under water, and a moment later another body, uplifted on the curved shoulder of a swinging sea.

The stormy light touched the fair hair and beard, the copper-tanned skin. Beornwulf had come home in a strange way.

O
WAIN
caught the man as he went by. His hand slipped, but he had him now by the hair and now under the shoulder. He would have let the sea carry them shoreward together, but he remembered that wicked undertow, and kept his grip on the rocks with one hand, clamping the unconscious man against him while the great surging sea went by, and braced himself with feet clenched into the shifting shingle, to withstand the backwash that must follow. There were some men not more than a few spear-lengths away, and he yelled to them: ‘Here! Brand! Hunfirth! It’s
Beornwulf!
Help me get him out!’

No one heard him the first time, and he yelled again, with a kind of despairing rage. ‘To me! Here to me! It’s Beornwulf! Oh, for God’s sake leave the wine-skins and help me!’

That time someone heard. He saw an arm upflung in answer.

When the struggle eased for a moment in the slack water between wave and wave, he shook the drenched hair out of his eyes, and saw through the flying spray that the men were forming a living chain out into the surf, working their way towards him. To leave unknown seamen to drown was one thing, but Beornwulf was a Seals’ Island man, and outdweller or no, he was kin to many of them. The leader of the chain—it was Brand the Smith—was quite near now, but Owain was very nearly done; another spent wave dragging seaward would take him with it, and already the pressure of the next great breaker was roaring up behind him. It broke well out on the rocks, and the yeasty water swung boiling shoreward. Owain let go his rock and plunged forward with it in a desperate stumbling rush.

He went under, and the hissing water closed over his head. He felt a sickening blow on one shoulder, but somehow, he never knew how, he had still his hold of the unconscious man. Then there were hands on him, hands that caught and slipped and caught again. Men were shouting in his ear, they were taking some of the strain of Beornwulf from him. The backwash was screaming out over the shingle, dragging at his body as though it were an old cloak in a gale of wind, but the human chain that had hold of him held firm. And then as the intolerable drag relaxed, he grounded, and was dragged to his knees; he found his feet under him and stumbled forward up the shelving beach as the next wave crashed behind him, pouring and creaming among the black rocks.

At the foot of the dunes, out of reach of the waves, he pitched to his knees, his burden slipping from him. He crouched there, a red darkness before his eyes, and in his ears a roaring that came even between him and the roaring of the storm, like a runner utterly spent after a great race. But as sight and hearing cleared, he saw men round him, and Beornwulf lying in a hollow of the spray-wet shingle where he had laid him down.

Beornwulf lay with the stillness of the drowned, a great broken bruise on his forehead. But he was not dead, only stunned, by the look of things. Owain drew a gasp of relief as he felt under his hands, the life fighting for itself in the man’s unconscious body. He got him over on to his face, and a little salt water came out of his mouth, but not much. He had come shoreward on the crest of a wave and had probably not taken in much water. Owain pressed on his back to drive out any more that there might be, and felt Beornwulf’s breathing waken under his hands.

He looked up at the men about him, pitching his voice above the gale. ‘We must get him home. Best fetch something to carry him on; he may have ribs broken for all I know.’

After a while a couple of men came down with a sheep-fold hurdle; they had to stand on it to keep it from flying away before they could lift Beornwulf on to it. Then Owain and Brand and two other men of the settlement took up the corners to carry him home.

There was no sign of the ship now, nothing but the dark jags of drifting wreckage, and other men shouting to each other in the shallows as the bales and spars and wine-skins came rolling in. And the wind was booming round to the south, as they set out for the two-mile-distant steading. Soon it would blow itself out.

The steading was awake and busy, the thralls already going about their early morning work, heads down and shoulders hunched against the wind. Athelis came to the house-place door when she heard the dogs bark, Lilla and Helga and the bondwoman with her. The others cried out at sight of the figure on the hurdle, but not Athelis; only she felt for the doorpost behind her, and her sharp-boned face looked for the moment like a very old woman’s, as she looked down at him. ‘Is he dead?’

Owain shook his head. They had hurried with their burden, and the wind, though not so high as it had been, was still high enough, and he had not much breath left for talking. ‘Na,’ he managed, ‘only stunned, I think.’

She let go the doorpost and stood aside for them to carry him in. ‘Set him down by the fire,’ she said; and that was all.

They did as she bade them, and stood off, panting. The three settlement men looked at each other; they had done what they could for a neighbour, and it was women’s work now, and there might still be gleanings to be got from the unexpected harvest of the sea. They grinned at each other, and one by one they slipped away.

The farm thralls had come pushing in after the rest, and Bryni was there from the sheep fold, white and silent, with his eyes fixed in a kind of scared bewilderment on his father’s face, and among the legs of the little throng, the dogs came nosing forward.

Athelis turned on them all, crying out in a high, strained voice. ‘Off! Be off, the lot of you! Gunhilda—children—stop that sniffling and squealing! Gyrth and Caedman, have you never seen a half-drowned man before that you must stare like oxen? Bryni, if you have left the sheep all abroad and they get into the kale patch your father shall beat you for it when the strength comes back to him.’

They scattered from her like scared chickens, the dogs slinking after them, and when they were gone she turned to Owain who was still standing by. ‘Now, help me to get him stripped and between blankets before he takes his death indeed.’

And so, in silence, save for the beating of the dying gale across the thatch, they set about the task of stripping Beornwulf of the few sodden rags that still clung to his body, and drying him off before they lifted him into the great box bed. ‘There was a wreck, then?—And he was on board?’ Athelis said at last. ‘It is strange that I did not feel the danger when the wind rose.’

‘We did not expect him so soon,’ Owain said, ‘and we did not know that he would have come by sea.’

‘I suppose not, though it is quicker by sea, when it does not end in drowning. Did many come ashore?’

‘Not living, I think.’ Owain flung the squelching remains of one shoe into a corner. ‘He came by me on the crest of a wave, and I was able to catch him before he went seaward again.’

She looked up, as though seeing him for the first time, beginning to wring the water from her husband’s hair while the steam wisped up from it in the warmth of the driftwood fire. ‘So? You look as near drowned as he does—Ah, and your shoulder is hurt.’

Owain glanced down at himself inquiringly. He had known, without really thinking about it, that his right arm was stiff and painful and growing difficult to use; and he saw that what remained of his kirtle was ripped completely off that side, and his shoulder was one great angry bruise. ‘The sea threw me on a rock.’

‘So?’ she said again. ‘It is maybe harder to save the life of a man than to catch wine-skins bobbing in the shallows.’

They had scarcely got Beornwulf between the soft skin rugs of the box bed, when he opened his eyes and was violently sick. He lay staring straight upward at the bed-roof overhead while they cleared up the mess, his eyes blank with the wandering blankness that one sees in the newly opened eyes of a puppy. Then slowly, bewilderment grew out of the blankness, the golden bars of his brows drew in almost to meeting point above his nose, and grunting, he began to fumble one hand up towards the broken bruise on his temple.

Athelis caught it and pressed it down again. ‘No, leave it be; you will hurt it.’

‘My head aches,’ he grumbled, and turned it a little, cautiously, on the rustling straw pillow, to look about him. ‘Where’s the ship?’

‘Smashed into firewood on the Seal Rocks,’ Owain said.

The blue eyes came round, frowning still, but less strained, to fix upon his face. ‘Yes, I remember now. Hammer of Thor! What a way to come home … You were there?’

‘A wreck is a wreck. Half the settlement was there,’ Owain said dryly.

Athelis, bringing wrung-out cloths to bathe her lord’s head, said, ‘He saved your life, my man, and I think he came near enough to losing his own in doing it.’

‘Ah!’ Beornwulf raised himself a little, wincing, and dodged the wrung-out cloth. ‘Then I have to thank him for the worst headache ever a man had without his skull flying in two—Also for the warmth of my own hearth and the light of day—’ He gave a little shiver. ‘It is better to be alive even with a splitting head, than drowned and wave-rolled to and fro among the black rocks of the Seal Strand.’