The Last Light of the Sun (37 page)

“Yes,” the king said, finally, “you will have done that. And asked for reinforcements to meet you. A ship’s worth? Very well. They will be dealt with next. You have all made a terrible mistake. Jad knows, I have no need or desire of ransom for any of you at all. My need, just now, is otherwise. Athelbert.”

“My lord!”
began another, older man. Another Cyngael. “They have laid down—”

“No words, Ceinion!” said the king of the Anglcyn.

He had spared the life of the man who’d blood-eagled his father. Everyone in the northlands knew the tale. He wasn’t doing so now. Aeldred turned away, indifferently, as arrows were notched.

Guthrum nearly got to him.

You didn’t let yourself die helplessly in a morning field like a target set up for womanish Anglcyn who dared not fight you properly. Not if you were an Erling and a warrior. He was actually at the king’s reins, reaching up, when the sword took him in the throat. It was the young Cyngael who had moved fastest, Guthrum saw with his last sight.

He was dying on his feet, though, in battle, as was proper. The gods loved their warriors, their blood, the dragon-ships, red blades, ravens and eagles called you home to halls where mead flowed freely and forever.

The sun was up, but he couldn’t see it, suddenly. There was a long white wave. He named Ingavin and Thünir, and went to them.

Expressionless, though with his heart beating fast, Brogan the miller stood by the stream and watched his king and warriors kill the Erlings in the meadow.

Fifteen or twenty of them. No hostages, none spared. There was no ferocity or passion in the dispatch of the raiders. They were just … dealt with. For more than a hundred years the Anglcyn had lived in terror of these raiders from the sea in their dragon-ships. Now the Erlings were being killed like so many ragged outlaws.

He decided, just then, that he liked King Aeldred after all. And watching the arrows fly, he came also to a reconsideration of his views on the subject of archery. Beside him, Modig stood gripping his spade, his mouth hanging open.

The
fyrd
turned to ride south. As they did, one rider peeled off from the others and came over towards the mill and stream where the two men were. Brogan felt a flicker of apprehension, made himself be calm. These were his defenders, his king.

“You live here?” the mounted man snapped, reining his mount on the other side of the river. “You are the miller?”

Brogan touched a hand to his forehead and nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

“Find villagers, farmers, whatever you can. Have these bodies burned before sundown. You yourself are in charge of collecting weapons and armour. Keep them in the mill. There are eighteen Erlings. All were armed in the usual ways. We have a good idea of what should be here when we come back. If anyone steals, there will be executions. We won’t stop to ask questions. Understood?”

Brogan nodded again, and swallowed hard.

“Make certain the others here do.”

The rider wheeled and set off, galloping now, to catch up with the
fyrd.
Brogan watched him go, a graceful figure in morning light. In the meadow, not far away, lay a number of dead men. Eighteen, the rider had said. His burden now. He cursed himself for coming out to watch. Spat into the stream. It was going to be
very
hard to stop poor men from stealing knives or rings. Surely the
fyrd
wouldn’t begrudge—or be able to track—a stray torc or necklace, would they?

It occurred to him that he and Modig might be able to gather most of the arms and store them before anyone else—

No, that wouldn’t work. The women would be here soon, for their flour. They would see what had happened. It was impossible to miss: Brogan saw birds already gathering where the bodies lay. He grimaced. This was going to be difficult. He suffered a reversion of his thoughts about king and
fyrd.
The lords were trouble, whenever they came, whenever they noticed you. He ought to have stayed inside. He was turning to Modig, to tell him to make a start, at least, but found his right arm gripped fiercely by his servant.

Modig pointed. Brogan saw a man emerge from the stream to their left—a pale, small figure for an Erling, he would say, later—and begin to run south. He was well behind the
fyrd,
which was almost out of sight. Certainly they were too far away for any call or cry to summon them back to take this last Erling, who’d kept himself hidden, apart from the rest. They’d have to let him go, Brogan thought. Not that he’d get far, alone.

Modig made a sound deep in his chest. He plunged into the stream, splashing through it, then began running, spade in hand.

“Stop!” cried Brogan. “Don’t be a fool!”

The Erling was moving fast, but so was young Modig, chasing him. Far away, the dust of the king’s men could be seen. Brogan watched the two running men till they were out of sight.

Later that morning he assembled the villagers to gather the weapons and armour—and the rings and arm torcs and belts and boots and brooches and necklaces—of the Erlings. The children ran about, chasing away the birds. Brogan made it very clear, talking more than anyone could remember, that the
fyrd
was coming back, and that death had been promised to anyone known to have taken anything.

The presence of eighteen dead raiders, the shock of them, meant that no one did try to palm or pocket a thing, so far as Brogan could tell. They carried the gear in relays across the water to the mill, piled it in his smaller storeroom. Brogan locked the door, hung the key on his belt.

He picked out only two rings for himself, and a golden torc in the shape of a dragon devouring its own tail. Added three other pieces of jewellery after, when most of the others had gone to bring wood and the two who had stayed behind with him, as guards, were drowsing under
the willow by the stream. It was a warm day. Across the water boys were throwing stones at birds and wild dogs near the eighteen dead men.

It was two of the boys who found the body of Modig, the son of Ord, shortly after midday, a little distance to the south. His ears and nose had been hacked off, and his tongue. That last, Brogan the miller thought, was a sad and vicious thing. He was angry. He’d found a perfect servant, finally, and the young fool had gone and gotten himself killed.

Life was an ambush, Brogan thought bitterly, a series of them. Over and over till you died.

Later in the day the villagers began streaming back with armloads and carts of wood, and the cleric. Their women came, too, and all but the youngest children. This was a great event, something unimaginable, never to be forgotten. The king had been here himself, had saved them from Erling raiders, slain them all, right beside the millstream. Their millstream. A tale for the colder nights to come and the long years. Babies not yet born would hear this story, be led to the place where it had happened.

The new cleric spoke under the open sky, invoking Jad’s power and mercy, then they lit the pyre, using wood that had been gathered for winter hearths, and they burned the Erlings in the field where they’d died.

After, they dug a grave and buried Modig by the stream and prayed that he might go home to the god, in light.

In a mist before dawn, some distance west, Bern Thorkellson dismounted to relieve himself in a gully. His first halt since leaving his father outside Esferth.

He had spent what remained of the night riding very fast, trying to take his mind from that impossible encounter. What was it the gods were doing with their
mortal children? You took a horse across black, frozen waters and lived, fought your way into Jormsvik, went on a raid in Anglcyn lands … and were rescued by your father. Twice.

Your accursed father, whose murders were the reason for all of this. For everything that had happened. And he simply showed up where you were—on the other side of the sea—and knocked you out in an alley and somehow carried you outside the walls and then came back to warn you, and order you on your way. It was all … hugely difficult. Bern could not have said that much about the world seemed clear to him that night.

He had just finished retying his trousers when a man and woman sat up from a hollow in the ground and stared at him, a handful of paces away.

This, at least, was clear enough.

They stood. It was still quite dark, mist around them, rising off the fields. Their clothing and hair were disordered; it was evident what they’d been doing. The same thing young men and women did in meadows all over the world on a summer night. Bern had done it on the isle, in better days.

He drew his sword. “Lie down again,” he said quietly. His own language, but they’d understand him. “And no one is hurt.”

“You’re an Erling!” the young man said, too loudly. “What are you doing here with a blade?”

“My own business. Attend to yours. Lie down again with her.”

“Rot that,” said the man, who was broad-shouldered, long-limbed. “My father’s the reeve here. Strangers declare themselves when they come by.”

“Are you a fool?” Bern asked, calmly enough, he’d have thought.

It was because he was with his girl, Bern later decided, that the Anglcyn did what he did. He reached down, grabbed a thick staff he’d have carried out with him for protection from animals, and stepped forward, swinging it at Bern’s head.

The woman cried out. Bern dropped to a knee, heard the whistle of the staff. He rose and levelled a short backhand slash with his sword to the man’s right arm, at the elbow. He felt it hit hard, but not bite.

He’d used the flat of his blade.

Couldn’t have said why. A memory of summer fields with a girl? Stupidity such as this man’s didn’t deserve to be indulged or rewarded. The Anglcyn ought to have lost an arm, his life. Didn’t the fool know how the world worked? You met a mounted man with a sword, you did what he instructed you, and prayed, urgently, that you’d live to tell about it.

The staff had fallen to the grass. The Anglcyn’s good hand clutched at his elbow. Bern couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness.

“Don’t kill us!” the girl said, her first words.

Bern looked at her. “I hadn’t intended to,” he said. She had fair hair, was tall. It was hard to make out more. “I told you to lie down. Do it now. Though if you let this idiot between your legs again you’re as much a fool as he is.”

The girl’s mouth opened. She stared at him, for longer than he’d have expected. Then she reached out and pulled the man down beside her into the hollow again, where they’d been warm together moments ago, young and in summertime.

“Honour your god in the morning,” Bern said, looking down at them. He wasn’t sure why he’d said that, either.

He went back to Gyllir and rode away.

In the hollow behind him, Druce, the son of Finan who was indeed king’s reeve of the lands thereabouts, began swearing viciously, though under his breath, in case.

Cwene, the baker’s daughter, put a hand to his mouth. “Hush. Does it hurt?” she whispered.

“Of course it hurts,” he snarled. “He broke my arm.”

She was clever, understood that his pride was wounded as well, after being so easily subdued in front of her.

“He had a sword,” she said. “There was naught you could do. I thought you were very brave.”

She thought he’d been a reckless imbecile. She was aware that they ought to have died here. Druce’s arm should have been severed, not bruised or broken, by that sword. The Erling could have done anything he wanted to her, after, anything at all, then left them dead in the tall grass with no one ever to know exactly what had happened. She said nothing more, lay there beside Druce, looking up at the last stars as blackness became grey, feeling the breeze that blew.

Eventually they made their way back towards the village, separated in the usual way, went to their homes. Cwene slipped into the house the way she’d come out, through the door that connected to the animal shed. Familiar smells, sounds, everything changed, forever. She should have died in the field. Each breath she took now, for the rest of her days …

She got into bed beside her sister, who stirred but did not wake. Cwene didn’t sleep. It was too near to morning. She lay there thinking, revisiting what had happened. Her heart was pounding, though she was in bed at home now. She began to weep, silently.

Three months later, in autumn, the baker beat her until she named the reeve’s son as the father of the child she was carrying. At that point her father became mightily
pleased (it was a very good match) and carried his anger across the village to the reeve’s door.

The baker was a large man himself, and not inconsequential. She and Druce were wed before winter. They had two more children before he was killed by someone who didn’t want to pay his taxes, or lose his farm. Cwene married twice more; outlived them both. Five children survived childhood, including the daughter conceived in the meadow that summer night.

Cwene had dreams, all her life, of the moment in darkness when an Erling had come upon them, a creature out of nightmare, and had gone away, leaving them their lives as a gift to use or throw away.

We like to believe we can know the moments we’ll remember of our own days and nights, but it isn’t really so. The future is an uncertain shape (in the dark) and men and women know that. What is less surely understood is that this is true of the past as well. What lingers, or comes back unsummoned, is not always what we would expect, or desire to keep with us.

It was late in a long life, and three husbands had been laid in the earth, before Cwene realized—and acknowledged to herself—that what she had wanted to do, more than anything before or since, was ride away from her home and everyone she knew in the world with that Erling on his grey horse that night long ago.

The clever girl had become a wise woman through the turning years; she forgave herself for that longing before she died.

RIDING SOUTH
, Bern was increasingly aware of hunger—he hadn’t eaten since late the day before—but he was also conscious of a cold, steady fear in his gut, and he didn’t let Gyllir slow as the sun rose, climbing the summer sky. He felt appallingly exposed here in these flat lands
running to the sea, knowing the
fyrd
was abroad and looking for Erlings with vengeance in mind.