The Reluctant Berserker (25 page)

Shocked to see him, Tatwine said only, “Leofgar?”

“Outlaws!” Leofgar shouted, and jumped into a shadow as though it were a pool of clean water. “Twelve, I think. There were more but they ran from me.”

Deala scrambled out of his shelter, came running to Hunlaf’s side. Tatwine joined them, forming up, back to back, with their shields overlapped like fishes’ scales. Leofgar would have shouted
Give me my bow!
but the outlaws—only the bravest, the most desperate left, now their more sensitive friends had been scared away—were coming out of the tree screen themselves, in a wide ring of ragged clothes and sharp weapons and sharper smiles, and he knew his lord did not have time to break for the tent and arm him.

The treacherous moon saved him this time, gleaming off the edge of a sickle as it swept out of the tree cover towards him. Without thinking, he fended the blow off with his bone whistle. The blade drove itself into the hollow where the marrow had once been, and stuck there. Leofgar pulled hard on the stuck weapon, let the outlaw’s own thrust bring him closer and then ran up beneath his arm and snapped the elbow over his shoulder.

The outlaw was a young man as thin as Leofgar, and he screamed with abandon—no warrior training there either, clearly. Leofgar didn’t have time for pity. He worked the sickle free of his poor, ruined whistle, and slit the boy’s throat with it in one move. He turned to face the next man, the one armed with a langseax and wearing some tatters of mail.

Under Leofgar’s breastbone, there was a little glow of satisfaction at the thought that he had angered all of these men enough for them to single him out as the first to die. The last few hours had been the greatest performance of his life—walking from spot to spot, outlaw to outlaw, feigning conversations in the dark behind them. Making strange noises and uncanny music, the sound of hooves and ghosts, and when that had softened them up, following it with the smack of stones from the sling. Pinches from demon fingers, the arrows of the elves.

More than half the band had fled long before his unwise attempt to wake Deala with a pebble from his slingshot had brought him out into the open to be revealed.
I defeated a dozen tonight. A score, perhaps.
At the thought he felt at peace and ready to die. So he was smiling when he brought his sickle blade up and drew it, ringing, across the belly of the second outlaw.

The mail turned the blow effortlessly—the edge went skittering along the rings to slide off harmlessly on the other side. This outlaw’s face was daubed with mud—he got only the impression of a flattened nose and eyes like the point of a spear before a crushing blow beneath his ribs picked him off his feet and launched him backwards into the domed foliage of a holly tree behind him.

He tore through spiky leaves, breaking branches in his fall, landed on his back and bruised his head. Pale sparks swarmed before his eyes, and he heard the man cursing, trying to brush aside the sheltering branches and come closer in to land another blow.

Rolling over, Leofgar got up on hands and knees and scrabbled away, all his warm satisfaction turned into panic, and the realization that no, he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want… All he wanted was…

As if Leofgar’s heart had called him up, there came a shout and a thud from outside the sheltering arch of holly. The outlaw’s body, pumping hot blood from the throat, crashed through the boughs to fall limp just where Leofgar had lain. He crawled out of shelter and saw the back of a third outlaw turned to him, and beyond the outlaw’s axe the never more welcome face of Wulfstan Glede, his usual soft, open expression exchanged for fury.

Leofgar had seen Wulfstan fight—the efficient brutality of it, as though it was a task he hated and got over as quickly as possible—and he knew this wolfshead was no match for the warrior. But he had had enough of being rescued. So when the outlaw leaned forward to parry the thrust of Wulfstan’s sword, Leofgar hooked the sickle around the man’s inner thigh and pulled back. It sawed into the great vein there. A rush of blood, black as ink, and the man was down within seconds.

Let the warriors worry about how honourable it had been to attack from behind. Leofgar would be the one to make up the song of this night, and he could have it remembered however he chose.

When his enemy fell like a stone before him, and he recognised Leofgar, Wulfstan’s taut concentration gave way to a look Leofgar could scarcely interpret. Relief at first, and then something akin to tenderness, a plea. His implausibly full mouth softened, and as he panted, eyes bright with the ardour of battle, the tip of his tongue crept out to lick his lips.

Leofgar didn’t think, any more than he had thought when they first met. He grabbed Wulfstan by the collar, dragged him into the holly—delighted by how unresisting, how eagerly he came—pushed him down against the slender twisted trunk and straddled him. He took handfuls of hair like fire and kissed and bit Wulfstan’s mouth as if it had done him harm.

A time passed when all he could think of was spit-slippery warmth and the hips held tight between his thighs, and the gorgeous little pleading whimper Wulfstan made when he flipped up the man’s skirts and ground down on the single layer of linen over his straining prick. Even the thought that he was sharing this refuge with a dead man, newly cooling, only made everything feel better, because they were alive.

A battle cry came in the distance, and he heard the clang of metal against shield. He made himself draw away while he yet ached. Touching the plump hot pillows of Wulfstan’s mouth with careful fingertips, he said, “I have a harp to find, and a lord to save.”

Here beneath the leaves it was again altogether dark. He could only hear Wulfstan’s hope. He would have liked to see it. “Later?”

“God willing.”

“You would save him, despite what he tried to do?”

“There are things a lord cannot ask of a man, and things he can. To stand by him in battle—I owe him that, by my own oath.”

“Though he may try to do it again?”

Leofgar’s glee faltered at the thought, but determination replaced it. “If he does, you and I will have to stop him. I have no doubt that together we can.”

Wulfstan smiled beneath his fingers. “I like the sound of that ‘together’. I am not without demons, but against demons
you
have no fear. And your enemies are but men—
I
am not afraid of them.”

Leofgar felt the smile take wing and latch itself to his own face. It was but a little agreement, an acknowledgment that they were stronger together than apart, but he had been terribly alone since Anna had gone, and this was a balm. “Let us face the seen and the unseen together.” He took the chance to lean in and lick the warmth from Wulfstan’s lips. They parted for him, obligingly.

“Lead on,” he said, because for all his pride he was without his bow, and it was only sense to send the fighter out ahead of him.

In the clearing, Tatwine, Deala and Hunlaf fought back to back with deadly and untiring skill. There were now only five men against them, the others lying like driftwood on the ground. It was a simple matter for Wulfstan and Leofgar to drift silent and unseen out of the woods, for Wulfstan to drive his long blade through their spines from behind while they were distracted trying to defend themselves from before.

With no fear for any of them, Leofgar hid his sickle’s gleam in a fold of tunic and stepped from shadow to shadow, keeping hidden. Skirting the final battle, he insinuated himself into Tatwine’s camp, and into his tent.

The sight of the bed turned his stomach, took the strength from his knees, but he pulled his gaze from it and rummaged through spilled furs and tunics. Nothing. The sound of battle slackened outside, blows now interspersed with panting and insults, and he knew time was short. They had to be here! Had to. He scoured the tent, and they were not.

Coming out, with tears and panic stirring, he saw the wood piled up beside the campfire. Such a mound of it! His despair turned coat, turned into hope as he remembered that he had once hidden Lark in a woodpile himself. He ran to the pile of twigs and brack and brushed the top of it aside. There she was, demure in her thick fur coat, with Hierting curled up beside her like a little sister.

“Oh!” he breathed, and pulled them from the litter, and might have wept and grinned until his face hurt, except that he heard Hunlaf and Deala talking, their voices growing louder, their footsteps approaching.

Holding the two
hearpes
to his chest with one arm, Leofgar backed away into the tree cover. In their shade, it was as dark as sin, and he had to feel his way between boughs—gauging direction from the growth of moss—until he was looking out once more on the moonlit clearing, where the last outlaw, silently, desperately fought off Tatwine and Wulfstan at once.

The outlaw fell in a curtain of red rain. Wulfstan glanced up at Tatwine’s grim face and settled his sword more firmly in his hand. Shifting his stance, he watched Tatwine with the intent focus of a man waiting for a deadly duel to begin.

What was he doing? Leofgar’s thoughts, aglow over the recovery of his
hearpes
, were slow to follow the threads. It looked as though Wulfstan was gathering himself to fight Tatwine.

Hunlaf and Deala were still in sight, making certain the outlaws were dead. The sound of heaving breaths, the gurgle of blood in slit throats, and the whickering of picketed horses, distressed by both noise and smell, punctuated a great silence as Tatwine and Wulfstan looked at one another and each wondered what they saw.

Does he think I need avenging, like a despoiled maiden?
Leofgar thought, outraged and frightened for him.
Because much good that will do me when the three of them strike him down.
“Glede!”

Wulfstan knew better than to break Tatwine’s gaze and look behind him, but something in his posture shifted, told Leofgar that he was listening.

“Glede. Please, no more. It’s done. We should go.”

Backing away, Wulfstan sheathed his sword with a snick of hand-guard against scabbard.

Tatwine raised his head, but Leofgar could tell from his face that all he could see was a black whispering of trees. “Leofgar? Come out here. We need to talk.”

Talk?
Leofgar thought, keeping his mouth open only so that he could breathe more silently.
Oh, of course you want to talk now.
Five, perhaps six more steps before Wulfstan passed into the shadow of the trees, but until he did there remained the chance that Tatwine might rush him, attack him simply to get Leofgar to stay.

Wulfstan took another step, and Tatwine called out, “Deala! I want him lamed. Bring him down!”

Deala was wrenching the gold tooth from an outlaw’s jaw and had put his bow on the ground beside him. By the time he had picked it up, found an arrow and aimed, Wulfstan had turned on his heel and bolted into the safety of the shade.

Leofgar caught him on the way in, laid his fingers on the man’s mouth to quiet him, and led him by the belt through the inky black—Leofgar feeling their way. Wulfstan stumbled once or twice, but on the whole he was careful footed, and their slight noises were covered by the rustle of the wind, and the movements of fox and boar and badger in the undergrowth.

Though Tatwine did plunge into the wood’s edge to follow them, they left the babel of his blundering miles behind them before they dared come out into the light and cast about for where Wulfstan had picketed his horse.

Wulfstan bore a bemused look, half-shocked and half-delighted, that would have sat well on a schoolboy who had just pulled his first prank on his monkish tutor. “I see now why the Welsh are always making cattle raids along the borders,” he said, grinning. “That was a hundred times better than any teaching game set up by the master-at-arms. We showed them our mettle, truly enough.”

Light in the east and dew settling on them. It didn’t seem worthwhile to make a fire, for the birds had already begun to sing. Leofgar’s blood called for movement, and his mind agreed it would be better to get further away before they could sleep in safety.

“We did,” he agreed, his spirit yet ablaze with the joy of battle. “He will have expected as much from you, but if this doesn’t teach him that I am a man, I know not what will. I have proved, tonight, I am not the soft little cringing catamite he supposes. I am no contemptible butter-slick boy-whore to open for his pleasure. I could not be so vile, and now he knows it.”

Leofgar smiled broad and bright at Wulfstan, hoping to hear him agree. Wulfstan looked away, and his mouth closed so tight his generous lips looked pinched. He unhobbled Fealo with brusque gestures, gathered up the reins in silence. “You may as well put the
hearpes
on the horse and walk unburdened,” he said at length, his voice gone cold. “And since you are not lost, you had better lead us all.”

Taking the reins, Leofgar shuddered involuntarily as his own blood cooled to match Wulfstan’s sudden chill. The delight of life began to seep away and other things took up its place—memories of blood and rape and desperation. He walked on, his thoughts circling around that moment under the holly bush. Once, as a child learning the flute, he could not make his fingers stop the holes properly, and the screeching and the rusty whistling and the silences had been like to drive him mad. Then one day, for no reason he could see, practice fell into place and the thing began to sing under his hands.

The moment under the holly had been like that—as though all the mistakes of old had finally led to a perfect note, and all that was left was to play.