Hawk of May (12 page)

I gnawed my sheep bone, trying to think of a way to slip off into the night while the Saxons drank. The thing seemed impossible. The camp was too well ordered and well guarded, and the sentries would certainly be alert to British thralls trying to leave the camp by night. Besides that, I knew I could not go far before collapsing. Perhaps tomorrow, I thought. They will have to give me some shoes, and when I am rested…

“You! Briton!”

I looked up; the voice was Eduin's. “My lord?”

“You can play the harp?”

“I have said so, my lord.”

“Then take the harp over there by the supplies and play something.”

On the other hand, perhaps they did treat their thralls as they treated their horses. I set the sheep bone down, hobbled over to the harp. The Saxons, pleased to have someone to play for them, leaned back expectantly.

“What kind of song do you wish, my lord?” I asked Wulf.

“A battle song. A good one.”

I let my fingers wander over the harp-strings, tuning a couple of them and considering. A British battle song, full of the deaths of Saxons, would hardly please them. I did not wish to arouse their suspicions by singing in Irish and showing myself to be from so distant a place as the Orcades. I settled for a song from Less Britain about a sword dance (Fire! Steel and fire! Oak-tree, night; Earth and stone and firelight…) They liked it, beating time with their palms against their thighs, eyes gleaming out of the darkness. When I finished they actually gave me a hornful of mead.

“Play another,” said the one with the strong accent.

“Of what kind, my lord?” I asked, savoring the mead.

“A lament for the fallen, harper,” commanded a voice from the dark behind me, in clear and accentless British. The Saxons leapt up as one.

“
Se
Cyning
!”
exclaimed Eduin. I had heard that title before, affixed to the names of all the important Saxons in Britain. It means “king.”

“Cerdic!” said Wulf, and added some formal greeting.

The king of the West Saxons returned it, coming forward into the firelight. Another stood behind him, still only a shadow.

Cerdic was not a tall man, and did not even look like a Saxon. He was slight and wiry, with fox-red hair and green eyes. His beard had a tendency to straggle, and he was not remarkably good-looking. But he wore his power with the same casual ease with which he wore his cloak, tossed back over one shoulder and showing the purple as if by accident. He smiled at my Saxons and waved his hand, bidding them to be seated again, then sat himself, managing somehow to be familiar and lordly at once. I could well believe that he was a great leader. But as the firelight caught his eyes, I saw with one of those sudden brief moments of clarity that there was Darkness in him as well, and a ravening hunger which made all his powers, his talents, and his followers alike, no more than spears cast at his goal. And from the one who stood behind him I sensed Darkness like a black fire, burning the very shadows about him. This other stepped forward after Cerdic, and brushed off the ground before folding himself down on to it. He was very tall, with the pale blond hair and pale blue eyes one thinks of as natural to the Saxons, and he was very good-looking. He was in his mid-thirties, and dressed like a great nobleman. He felt my eyes on him and glanced in my direction; for an instant our eyes met, and his gaze sharpened suddenly and tore at me, demanding something. I looked away.

Wulf gave the two newcomers some mead, speaking respectfully as he offered it. Cerdic sipped his and raised his eyebrows.

“Fine mead, Wulf Aedmundson,” he said, still in British. “From your new holding? I told you the Downs were good country for honey. Have you tried growing grapes there yet?—Well, Briton, play as you were bid.”

“Yes, my lord,” I whispered, not looking at him. “A lament for the fallen.”

His eyes had merely passed over me before; when I spoke he saw me. He glanced at his companion. The other's mouth tightened, and he drummed his fingers on his knee. Cerdic frowned.

I swept the strings with my hand, played a complicated prelude without really thinking. They were important, these two. Cerdic,
Cyning thara West Seaxa
, as his own people would put it, and the other…who? He was strong in Darkness. Cerdic, I thought, does not comprehend the Darkness, but, from ambition, wishes to use it; but this other one is like Morgawse.

A lament for the fallen. There are plenty of laments, more than there are battle songs. Laments for those fallen by the hands of the Saxons, men such as I sat among. I sang a famous lament, a slow, fierce, proud thing that was made when the province of south-east Britain was overwhelmed by the Saxons, an old song which called the province by its still older name, the land of the tribe of the Cantii.

“Though they made the Saxon hosts to sleep

By the sea's white cliffs, and made women weep;

The fullness of glory was not complete,

The host rides to Yffern in defeat

And in their fields the eagles feast.

Bitter the harvest now to reap:

They fought the Saxons, fought and fell,

We shall gather corpses, make tears our well,

And the host of Cantii will not return…”

Cerdic listened intently. When I struck the final note, he nodded. “A very fine song. And very well sung. You have had more than a little training in harping.”

“Thank you, Great King,” I said in a flattered tone. I could not give him reason to suspect that I was anything more than a common thrall. I drew my cloak closer about my shoulders, as though I found the night cold, and hoped that it would cover my sword.

“Play another,” ordered Cerdic, and I complied.

The king began to talk with Wulf, drinking his mead and paying no more attention to me. But his companion, the other nobleman, watched me still, lids half drawn over those pale but oddly dark eyes.

I played on, realizing that I was better than I had been at any time before. Perhaps it was from hearing the song in Lugh's Hall, perhaps it was simply freedom from the Darkness, but I could tell that I was making the music live upon the strings and in the heart, a thing many professional bards cannot do. I became uneasy, and wished that I had had the sense to play badly at the beginning of the evening.

Cerdic eventually finished whatever business he had come to speak with Wulf about, and rose to leave. I began to relax again.

But when the companion rose, he nodded to me. “You play well, Briton,” he said. His voice was cool, and he spoke slowly, drawling out his words in a mocking tone. “Well enough to make yourself valuable. But not so valuable that you should be allowed to bear a sword, which is against all law and custom. Give it here.”

I stared at him for a long moment, horrified, though I should have expected it. Close on the horror followed an unexpected rage, anger at this arrogant Saxon sorcerer treating me as a piece of merchandise, at his demanding my dearest possession; anger at the casual callousness of the other Saxons; and most of all, anger at myself for accepting slavery and abuse instead of laying down my life for my honor as I should have done. I raised my eyes and met the sorcerer's gaze directly, my hand dropping to Caledvwlch. “I cannot give you the sword.”

“You defy me?” he asked, still drawling and amused. “A slave defying the King of Bernicia?”

So that was who he was, had to be: Aldwulf of Bernicia, reputed the cruellest of the Saxon kings. I stopped, struggling to control myself. His eyes were again questioning, demanding something. His lips moved, and I recognized the unspoken words, and my grip tightened on the sword as I recalled how Morgawse had taught them to me.

“I am sorry, Great Lord,” I said, my voice sounding, even to myself, too soft. “The sword is my master's. I cannot give it to any other…” I tried desperately to force myself back into the role I had chosen, reminding myself that I was no warrior. “To no one but my master, or his heir.”

But the Saxon smiled as though he were satisfied at something. I saw that I had made some mistake, that now he knew what he had been demanding of me, and I felt cold.

“So, you are loyal, too,” Aldwulf said, still smiling. “Keep the sword, then, for your master's heir.” He glanced over to Cerdic and said something in Saxon. Cerdic directed a sharp question to him, and I caught the words,
“ne thrall,
”
at which some of the other Saxons grunted. Aldwulf replied languidly and shrugged. Cerdic looked thoughtful, turned to Wulf, and asked him some question, to which Wulf replied at some length. When he had finished, Cerdic turned to me.

“Wulf has said that you can take care of horses as well as harp, and that your master, by your report, died today in some blood feud about which you fear to give information. I am considering whether to buy you, Briton. What is your name?”

I stared at my hands on the harp, feeling sick. If the king bought me, how could I escape? And, since Aldwulf was clearly the driving force in this inclination to buy me, what would happen to me if I did not escape?

“Gwalchmai.” I answered Cerdic's question with the truth.

“A warrior's name, not a thrall's.”

“I was born a free man, Chieftain. My master did not care to change my name, seeing that I was used to it.”

“And you are loyal to this murdered master, but not so loyal as to give information about the feud. How long have you been a thrall?”

“Three years, Chieftain.” A good enough length of time.

He looked me up and down carefully, and I cursed my stupidity in singing so well and acting like a free man instead of a thrall. Be no one, I told myself. Make them doubt that you are anything. Here in the seat of his power this man can destroy you with a word.

“He sings well,” Cerdic said to Wulf. “I will buy him from you, if the price is appropriate.”

Aldwulf smiled again, looking at me steadily while Cerdic bargained with Wulf and Eduin. After only a little of the bargaining, Cerdic stripped two heavy gold armlets from his right arm, then added a third. A good price. Most slaves, in these days when men were cheap, brought scarcely more than half of that. Cerdic would not pay it because he liked my singing—but that was obvious.

“Well, boy, now I am your master,” Cerdic told me. “Come.”

“Yes, lord. Did you buy the harp as well?”

“That I give you,
dryhten
,
Lord,” said Wulf. “A token of honor from my clan for their
cyning.
” He sounded sincere. I wondered what he and Cerdic had said to each other.

Cerdic nodded thanks and set off. I stumbled after him, my feet doubly sore after the short rest, carrying the harp.

The king stopped at one or two other camps and a house within the fortress, I guessed to discuss with the leaders of influential clans. He required me to sing something to amuse the various warriors, perhaps so as to show off his new purchase. But Aldwulf abandoned us at the first stop, and I felt much better for his absence.

It was after midnight when the Saxon king finally decided that it was time to rest. We went to a fine Roman government building at the center of the fortress. I was staggering with exhaustion by then, and didn't even pause to notice the mosaics or the pond in the atrium. Cerdic turned me over to his servants with a brief word of explanation in the courtyard, then went off to his own apartments to sleep.

I stood, facing Cerdic's thralls. They looked back with a strange blend of suspicion and fear—the same look that Wulf had given me when I met his party on the road. I was too tired to puzzle at it, though, and said only, “I am Gwalchmai. Your master has, I imagine, just told you that he bought me tonight because I harp well and can tend horses. I have been walking or working all day and I am tired. Where can I sleep?”

The thralls hesitated, still unsure of me, then finally showed me through the house to the servants' quarters by the stables, and there I collapsed and fell instantly asleep.

I woke again in less than three hours. I lay still for a little while, dizzy with weariness and stiff, wondering why I had woken. Some dream slid through my mind like a silver fish and vanished. I sighed and sat up, reaching for Caledvwlch.

As my hand closed about the sword-hilt, the ruby began to glow. I sat, staring at it.

“Is there something more I must do tonight, Lord?” I asked, aloud.

There was only silence, and the warm glow which answered a deep, almost buried fire within me.

I stood, adjusted the baldric I had forgotten to take off, and walked from the room.

The black bulk of the house loomed above the stable against the starlit sky. The town was dark, except for the distant watch-fires at the walls. I shivered in the night air, though despite the spring coolness it was not really cold. No, there was a sensation I recognized in the air, a sensation which radiated from the house. I turned back into the house, found my way to the atrium, then, after hesitation, made my way into the mosaiced living quarters of the nobles. All the thralls slept.

It was dark in the house, a deep silence and a black heat, different from but still similar to Morgawse's icy cold. It was difficult to breathe. I stood for a minute, allowing my eyes to adjust, then, with my hand on the hilt of my sword and a prayer to the Light in my mind, I walked forward to the closed door at the end of the corridor, and opened it a bare inch to look beyond it.

The first thing I saw was a shadow that swung backwards and forwards against the wall, and only after that did I see the body that cast it. The man was dead by then, head wrenched grotesquely sideways by the rope he had been hanged from. He looked to be British, but in that light one could not really tell. I recognized the pattern which was drawn on the floor beneath him, drawn in his blood, and the pattern about the single thick candle near the door. Aldwulf of Bernicia knelt before the first pattern, casting a handful of rune-sticks upon it and reading off the words they formed. Cerdic, who stood to one side, his eyes bright from the hunger in them, gave no sign of understanding what the runes meant. I, may the Light protect me, understood.