Dawn Wind (24 page)

Against those piled cloud-banks Wodensbeorg rose with its triple crown of turf ramparts that were old almost as the hill they circled. He could see already the darkness of massed men along the ramparts and at the gateway barricades, and the first level sunlight splintered on axe-blade and helmet-comb, though the great wings of men outspread down the hillside on either flank, and the long curved battle-line of the Allied war-host were still in shadow.

Looking along that battle-line Owain could make out the White Horse standard of Coel upreared in the centre, and away on either side the winged and taloned and serpent-tailed standards of lesser Kings spreading and lifting a little in the faint stirring of the air. Close before him, where Haegel stood among his hearth-companions, his glance caught the gleam of the new scarlet cloak that Athelis had woven for her lord last winter—scarlet as the Red Dragon of Britain that was not flying with the Saxon standards today but waiting in the dark woods for its hour to come. Suddenly he knew that like the men on either side of him, he had something to fight for, and not, as he had once thought, only something to fight against. He was one with the men crouching in the woods beyond Wodensbeorg, waiting to go into battle for the sake of a frontier and a free people among the Western Hills. And in that instant with the knowledge of his oneness with them, he was one with the Saxon warriors at his shoulders. ‘One band, one brotherhood …’

A few moments later, above the waiting sounds of the host, the quickened breathing of men, the faint jar of weapons, he heard the hollow booming of the warhorns.

It was a long day and a bloody one, and when it was over, Ceawlin was no more King of the West Saxons but a fox hunted through the furze; and Owain was still a long way from his freedom.

He did not know that; he was thinking of his freedom as he knelt beside the little upland stream washing the spear-gash in his sword-wrist. It was a shallow gash but it had bled a lot. He was remembering the trampling roaring struggle about the great gateway that had surged to and fro for what seemed like an eternity; the sudden tumult in the enemy’s rear that he knew was the British attack. He was seeing again, as the men behind Coel and Haegel broke yelling through and stormed up against the inner defences, the Red Dragon seeming to hover on spread wings above the battle …

The British had earned their frontier. And soon now, by summer’s end at latest, he would be free to seek his own people; free to find Regina again. It crossed his mind, as he held his wrist in the cold running water and watched the bright wisp of flowing blood grow thinner, that the Thorn Forest could not be so very far from here … No, he would not go to look for her until he was free—really free.

He heard a movement behind him, and looked up quickly. The blue-black storm-clouds had crept almost across the sky, and little uneasy puffs of wind were stirring all ways at once among the fern and the brambles; and standing at the top of the bank, outlined against the coming storm, stood Vadir the Hault, leaning on his spear as though it were a staff, and looking down at him. The man had fought like a hero that day; now, though there was no mark on him, he looked utterly spent and his face against the gloom was drawn and white, but his pale eyes were as bright as ever, and Owain wondered how long he had been standing there watching him.

‘Ah, here you are,’ said Vadir, conversationally. ‘Beornwulf is asking for you. They have carried him into the inner berm of the fort with the rest of the wounded.’

‘He is wounded then?’ Owain said stupidly, scrambling up from his knees. ‘Badly wounded?’

Vadir shrugged very slightly. ‘As wounds go, it is quite a small one. Surprising, when you come to think of it, how small a rent in a man’s hide will serve to let the life out, like Marat from a punctured wine-skin.’

And as the first distant mutter of thunder trembled on the air, he turned without another word, and hobbled off towards the place where they had picketed the horses.

A short while later Owain was crouching beside Beornwulf in the lower berm between the earthworks, trying with his own cloak spread round him, to shelter him from the first white lances of the rain. He had seen the wound; it was quite a small one, as Vadir had said, round and dark just under the breast-bone, ragged round the edges where they had tried to cut the arrow-barb out; it did not even bleed very much, outwardly, but he knew that it would bleed internally and there would be no stopping that.

Beornwulf knew it, too.

He lay propped against the foot of the bank because breathing hurt him less that way, and looked at Owain with eyes as blue as Lilla’s and Helga’s. ‘You—have been a long time coming,’ he said.

‘I came as soon as Vadir told me.’

‘Ah, Vadir.’ It seemed to Owain as though the man’s name was linked in some way with whatever it was that Beornwulf wanted him for. But for a while he did not speak again, and between them and the tumult of the camp, he heard the swish and patter of the rain, and then far off the low growl of thunder along the hills. ‘It is growing dark,’ Beornwulf said. ‘I cannot see you clearly.’

‘That’s the storm coming.’

‘That as well,’ Beornwulf said with a grim quirk of laughter on his lips that were straight with pain. He seemed to gather himself together for a great effort and when his voice came again it had a hoarse urgency. ‘Owain, when I set out for the Kentish Court last year, I left all things in your keeping at Beornstead. I shall go to Valhalla before morning—and I—should go with a quieter heart if I might know that I left Beornstead to lie in your hands again.’

Owain was silent, not sure of his meaning, but knowing that it was a threat to all that he had hoped for, all that he had been thinking of beside the stream.

‘It goes ill with a household that has no one but a woman at its head—a woman and a boy; and you know what manner of boy Bryni is—a wild young colt that will be running into trouble if he is given his head thus early.’ He made as though to raise himself in his desperate urgency, and fell back, coughing blood. ‘Stay with him and his mother until he is fifteen and a man,’ he said, as soon as he could speak again. ‘I would not ask it of you if I had a kinsman to turn to, but you know—how it is with me, that I am the only son of an only son, and—have only one son in my turn.’

Still Owain was silent, turned a little to look out over the dark distances, sloe-purple now under the storm-clouds that dropped away from the turf ramparts. Bryni was eleven now; that meant four years. Four more years, when he had thought to go free before the summer’s end. It was too much to ask of anyone. There was Regina, too, but like enough she had no more need of him, and Beornwulf’s eyes were clinging to his face like the eyes of a sick dog. He turned his head slowly, as though it was stiff on his shoulders, and looked down at the dying Saxon. ‘Go with a quiet heart, Beornwulf; I will stay by the boy until he is fifteen.’

Beornwulf snatched a small sigh. ‘So. Take my sword when they build the death-pyres tomorrow, and give it to him when the time comes. It should go with me, but it is a fine blade, and the boy will need a sword … Helga is spoken for already: Lilla will be ripe for marrying in two or three more summers—it was in my mind to arrange it with Brand the Smith that young Horn should have her. Tell her mother so. Edmund Whitefang owes me something still, for his share of the boat last herring season, but—you know that …’ He broke off and began to cough again. Owain bent quickly and wiped the blood out of his beard, and after a while he struggled on once more. ‘Have a care to anything that—has Vadir’s hand in it. Nay, I’ve no cause, but I have—never trusted him, and—the boy hates him. You know why. There may be—trouble between them one day … For the rest—do as—best you can until the boy—comes to his manhood and—can take all into his own hands.’

‘I understand,’ Owain said, roughly because his throat was aching. ‘Be quiet now; there’ll be no harm come to Beornstead or to the Beornstead folk, if I can hold it off.’

‘I always—reckoned I’d made a good bargain with that gold piece,’ said Beornwulf, and with that last attempt at a jest, closed his eyes.

The rain was teeming down now, and as Owain leaned forward to spread his cloak further across the dying Saxon, the first jagged lightning leapt between sky and earth, and while the white blaze of it still hung before his sight, earth and sky together shuddered to the crack and the hollow roar of the thunder.

Beornwulf opened his eyes once more. ‘Hark to Thor’s Hammer splitting the clouds asunder, as we split the might of Ceawlin and his sons,’ he said; and the sound of his voice was the sound of triumph, though the breath rattled in his throat.

Beornwulf died before morning, and Owain took his sword as he had bidden him, and since he did not want to be charged with robbing the dead, carried it to Haegel and showed him that he had done so.

Haegel was standing to watch them build the death-pyres of thorn and furze over a heart of ash logs, and merely nodded when he saw his foster brother’s sword, saying, ‘Aye, it must go to the boy of course. His dagger will serve him well enough for the journey,’ and turned away to bid them build this end of the pyre less steeply.

Owain went away with a rush of hot anger in his heart. But later when he saw Beornwulf laid with the other dead ready for the pyre, there was a sword at his feet, after all, waiting to be laid with his ashes when the burning was over; a great sword with a grip formed of twisted serpents that he had surely seen before, and when he looked at it more closely, he knew that it was the King’s.

And when next Owain saw Haegel of the South Saxons, he was wearing a sword drawn from the common war-kist, plainer if possible than his own, for it had not even silver flowers inlaid on the shoulders.

C
EAWLIN
had escaped with his sons, and a kind of running warfare dragged on with skirmishes here and there, until late summer came, and it was time to turn back from the war-trail, and go home to get the harvest in. But all men knew that however many summers passed before he was hunted down at last, the thing was finished. Coel and not Ceawlin wore the crown of Wessex, and Aethelbert of Kent had had his revenge.

On a day of quivering heat haze with the corn-lands ripe for the sickle, Haegel and his war-host returned to the King’s farm by Cissa’s Caester. They had been shedding war-bands at every settlement, at every track that branched from the old paved road, since they crossed the border into their own South Saxon Lands; and by the time they straggled into the wide garth of the royal farm, they numbered few more than the men of Maen Wood and Seals’ Island, beside the household warriors.

Women and dogs greeted them, and that night there was feasting in Haegel’s Hall, and men sang triumphant songs to the bright music of the harp, though a few women wept and a few dogs pattered among the warriors, looking for masters who had not returned. Owain grew tired of the feasting before it was over, and wandered out by himself to get a mouthful of cool air and see that all was well with Wagtail in the great meadow below the King’s Place where they had picketed the horses. His way back to the steading led through the apple garth; the King’s trees were taller and better shaped than the Beornstead ones, for the wind did not have its way with them quite as it did out on the Seals’ Island; and in the white light of the moon, the ripening apples were silver among the leaves. And just within the gate he found Einon Hen leaning against a mossy trunk and gazing up with his one fierce old eye into the branches. ‘I have found in the course of a long life that there is nothing like the air that blows through apple trees for clearing a man’s head from the fumes of overmuch mead,’ said the old Envoy, when he saw him. ‘So you also have had enough of Haegel’s Mead Hall.’

‘The rest seem to have struck root to the drinking-benches,’ Owain said moodily, and checked beside him.

‘Ah well, the long marches are done; we can all sleep off frowsy heads against the pig-sty wall in the morning.’

‘Not me. I must be on my way before first light. The morning tide will serve for me to get Wagtail across the creek about sunrise, and—if I wait for the rest, the news may get to Beornstead in some garbled and roundabout way before I come.’