‘On the white crest of the Sacred Horse—Swear!’
And for the last time, with a crash of weapons on shield rims, came the thunderous response: ‘On the white crest of the Sacred Horse, we swear.’
Owain swore with the rest, like a Saxon warrior.
The priest was scattering something with a long horse-hair switch among the war-host, something that speckled red where it fell. Most of it fell among the warriors of the forefront, but a drop splashed on to Owain’s forehead like a heavy drop of thunder rain, still faintly warm. ‘That’s lucky,’ his neighbour told him. ‘That’s a sign of favour from the gods.’ But it was a sign that he would rather have done without, though he would not betray himself by wiping it off.
They dragged the carcass of the White Stallion away to be given to the hounds. It was only a carcass now and somewhere in the King’s horse-runs a young white stallion had become the God’s Horse at the moment that the old one died. They spread sand over the blood on the King’s threshold, and the thing was done.
The close-knit mass of warriors broke and drifted apart, and made for the cooking-fires where whole sheep and oxen were roasting.
Owain took his sizzling slice of beef on the point of his dagger, and drew off to the outskirts of the throng to eat it, his back propped against the low wall of the calf fold.
Above the surge of voices he could hear Haegel’s herd-bull, angry about something, trampling and bellowing in his stable.
Slowly the light faded from the vast arch of the sky; dusk was creeping up over the level country, and in the King’s forecourt the light of the fires began to brighten, throwing a confusion of glares and shadows over the shifting figures of the warriors and the women who moved among them with the ale jars. Owain felt queerly detached from the scene as though he alone had no roots in it. He had taken the war-oath with these men, he was bound to them and they to him, and yet he was cut off from them. He was British and they were Saxon, and between the two lay all the gulf that could lie between two worlds; but dimly he realized that there was another gulf between them also. They had something to fight for; he had only something to fight against. It was a curiously desolate feeling.
Not far from where he leaned, stood a shoulder-high column of rough stone, notched and weathered with age, on which the King’s warriors had sharpened their weapons for a hundred years; and with the main business of eating done, a knot of young warriors had gathered about it. Wiping his dagger clean with a handful of grass pulled from the base of the wall, Owain fell to watching them. The group constantly changed and shifted in the deepening dusk, as men brought up sword or spear-blade to sharpen, and stayed a while to laugh and brag and scuffle with their fellows, then wandered back to one or other of the fires, to see to the horses in the picket lines or look for a girl among the farm buildings. By and by, with a kind of defiance to his feeling of separateness and isolation, Owain pushed off from his wall and wandered over to join them.
They made way for him or did not make way for him, exactly as they would have done for any other of their fellows, as he shouldered into their midst. They were almost beyond the reach of the nearest fire, shapes of solid darkness save for the faint jink of light as they moved, in dagger-hilt or shoulder-clasp, or in the bright eyes of a laughing man.
‘Listen to that brute of Haegel’s bawling,’ somebody said. ‘He’d like to tear up the roots of the world, by the sound of him.’
‘He is angry,’ said another. ‘Wouldn’t you be angry, if we had been feasting on your sons?’
And a third slapped his stomach and belched happily. ‘And never did I taste a sweeter bit of beef.’
There was a burst of laughter, and Owain, suddenly warmed, laughed with the rest, and felt his world and theirs draw a little closer together. It was a long while since he had laughed as a free man among free men.
He had no need to be ashamed of his sword when it came to his turn at the sharpening stone. It was a plain serviceable weapon, with a grip of yellow linden-wood worn silken-dark with much handling; the balance was good, so that the thing felt alive in his hand, and the smith who made it had not forgotten beauty in the need for use, for beside the beauty of its own clean lines, the shoulders were inlaid with small four-petalled silver flowers.
Stooping, he drew the blade curving across the stone, feeling the bite of iron on granite; and the white sparks flew out on either side, bright as shooting stars on a winter’s night. The throat of his shirt had fallen open as he stooped, and a thick-set youngster beside him leaned quickly forward, and jabbed his finger into Owain’s neck, just above the collar-bone. ‘You—I do not know your name. What’s that?’
Owain was aware that the thrall-ring, worn through six years, had left an encircling stripe of white skin on the wind-burned brown of his neck. He stiffened a little, and drew the blade again across the great whetstone, sending up another flight of sparks so that there should be light to see by. ‘What does it look like?’
‘It could be the mark of a king’s gold collar, but I’d say more likely it was the mark of a thrall-ring.’
‘It is the mark of a thrall-ring,’ Owain said levelly, continuing to sharpen his sword. ‘Until seven days since, I was thrall to Beornwulf, the King’s foster brother,’ and he jerked his head towards the open doorway of the Hall. The young Saxons were crowding closer round him, curious, ready for sport if sport offered, but not unfriendly.
‘So—you’re British, then? I thought you were, as soon as you gave tongue,’ said the thick-set young man. ‘What are you doing in the ranks of Haegel’s shield-warriors? Have you ever handled a sword before?’
‘Only in practice, not in war. I had only my dagger by Aquae Sulis when the last of our Princes fell. There were no swords to spare for boys.’
‘They tell me that was a great fight!’ A laughing giant flung a great arm friendlywise across his shoulders, and swung him round as though presenting him to the rest. ‘They need not have sent us Einon Hen, down from his Western Mountains; look now, brothers, we have a Briton in our midst already, and one suckled in war.’
Oddly, they seemed to feel nothing against him for being what he was, and still more oddly, he did not resent the arm across his shoulders. Maybe here, so deep into the Saxon lands, the old enmities had grown thin; maybe it had to do with the bond of a common enemy, the smell of the Ravens gathering. But he was startled and bewildered by the giant’s words. ‘You talk in riddles, so far as I am concerned. Who is this Einon Hen?’
‘The British Envoy. Do you tell me that you did not know?’
Owain drew a sharp breath. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘I did not know. And still I do not understand.’
Several voices answered him, taking up the tale one from another. ‘Didn’t you know that the Britons of Wales have made a treaty with us? Their swords against Ceawlin, and in return, a frontier that we Saxons will not cross? Where are your ears? It has been running through the war-host all evening! There’s a British host massing beyond the Sabrina, they say, and to each of our Saxon Kings they have sent one of their great men to help on the brotherly understanding—’
He stood silent among them for a long moment, then he said in a voice so carefully schooled that it only choked a little, ‘You are spinning it as you go along, like a harper’s tale for a winter evening.’
‘Why should we?’ demanded the thick-set young man.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I look like a fool.’
The giant gave his shoulder a friendly shake. ‘Go and look, if you don’t believe us. He’ll be sitting in the guest-seat.’
And Owain settled his sword back in its wolfskin sheath, and went.
There were men crowded about the foreporch doorway, passing the ale horn from hand to hand. Owain pushed through them until he came where he could look up the Hall. The vast barn-like place was flickering and flaring with fire and torchlight that was thickly cloudy as wild honey; and after the dark of the forecourt, Owain, standing on the threshold, could make out litt
le at first but a kind of fiery cloud. Then, as his eyes grew used to the torchlight, he began to see the details of the scene and pick out one man from another on the crowded benches. Half-way up the Hall, two great raised seats faced each other across the width of it and the hearth between. In the King’s seat sat Haegel with his mead horn on his knee and his small son Halfdean bolt upright and valiantly wakeful on the raised step beside his feet. But Owain looked towards the guest-seat opposite. A man sat there, with the great serpent-wreathed guest-cup of the Royal House in his hands; a small, oldish man, dwarfed by the vast carved seat until he looked like a merlin on a goshawk’s perch. As he turned his head to look down the Hall, Owain saw that he had only one eye; but it was a blazing amber eye, and that too, added to his falcon aspect; for in the piercing stare of a bird of prey, one sees only one eye at a time. His mantle, flung back because of the heat in that place, was chequered blue and russet like the plumage of a kingfisher, and the grey hair that sprang thickly back from his forehead was bound by a slender gold fillet such as the British nobles still wore in the mountains, as they had done before the Romans came.
So it was true.
Owain never moved from his place by the door, until the singing and story-telling was finished and the horns drunk dry. But all that while, he was seeing not the King’s Hall in the firelight, but a British war-host gathering beyond the Sabrina crossings, hearing not the voice of a Saxon gleeman but British war-horns sounding again among the Western Hills—and he was not free to answer their call.
At last men began to get to their feet, stretching and kicking the dogs aside, and to lounge out for a breath of night air to clear their heads while the pillows and rugs were spread for sleeping. Then he left his place, and slipped like a shadow after Beornwulf.
For a few moments he lost him in the darkness and the shifting throng, and when he caught sight of him again he was standing beside one of the fires with a knot of other men from the Seals’ Island. He had meant to try for a chance to speak with him alone, but suddenly he could not wait, even though one of the other men was Vadir.
He strode forward quickly. ‘Beornwulf—’
The other swung round. ‘Owain! I was wondering should I have to seek through the whole war-host to find you—’ he began.
But Owain cut in on him, a little breathlessly. ‘Beornwulf—did you know?’
There was an instant’s silence, and then Beornwulf said, ‘About the treaty with your people?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not until a few hours ago.’
Briton and Saxon, their gaze met and held, steady in the light of the sinking fire; and Owain knew that the Saxon was speaking the truth. It was no fault of Beornwulf’s that the word had come to him too late. He gave a little shake to his shoulders: since there was no help in the thing, let it rest. ‘What did you want me for, Beornwulf?’
‘Not for myself, but for the British Envoy,’ Beornwulf said. ‘He is an old man, and should have someone to see to his comfort and spread his sleeping rug.’
Eagerness leapt for an instant in Owain, and then sank like a newly kindled flame. British as he was, in Saxon war-gear and bound by a Saxon oath, how could he face this terrible little half-blind princeling of his own people? ‘Has he no young kinsman to serve him? No armour-bearer of his own?’
Vadir, who had been looking on with chilly amusement deepening the thin lines of his face, put in his word. ‘I have seldom heard of a hostage bringing his household with him.’
‘A hostage?’ Owain caught his breath. ‘I had thought—’ he broke off. He had almost said ‘I had thought that this was a treaty between equals,’ but he would sooner have his tongue torn out than say that before Vadir Cedricson.
Beornwulf said loudly, before the other could speak again, ‘Einon Hen comes as an envoy, freely and with honour, and being a brave man among those who were lately his enemies, he comes alone … Go then and offer him your service; since you also are British, there is no one more fitting among the Saxon war-host.’ He brought a hand from under his cloak, and clamped it for an instant on Owain’s braced shoulder. ‘It is an honour; you understand that?’
‘Surely a very great honour,’ murmured Vadir, looking at the stars.
But Owain did not look at him, though his own hands were clenched into shaking fists at his sides. ‘I understand that,’ he said.
A little later, in the darkened Hall, Owain knelt before the British Envoy as he sat on his allotted bench against the wall, untying for him the thongs of his soft leather shoes. He had spread the rugs and straw-filled pillow for the old man, and helped him strip off his tunic, for the night was close in the Hall, and most of the men would sleep stripped to their breeks, with a cloak thrown over them. ‘Beornwulf, the King’s foster brother, told me that you were without an armour-bearer of your own here to serve you,’ he was saying, in his own tongue that he had not used for so long.
‘Ah, they told me there was a countryman of mine among Haegel’s young warriors.’ Einon Hen leaned forward and touched Owain’s neck with a bony finger, more lightly than the man at the weapon stone had done. ‘And until lately you have worn a thrall-ring? Were you taken in war?’
Owain shook his head. ‘Oh, no, I gave myself up without a blow struck.’
‘How so?’ demanded Einon Hen.
‘We—a friend and I—thought to escape to Gaul, but she fell ill in the woods before we could reach the coast. She was younger than me, only about thirteen, and she—would have died, I think. She needed warmth and tending, and—she needed milk, you see.’ He sat back on his heels, and raised his eyes to the old man’s deep-scored face. ‘There was not anything else that I could do.’
It did not seem to him at all strange, until he thought about it afterwards, that he should be talking so to this fierce little falcon of a man, freely as he had not talked to anyone since Uncle Widreth died, and as though they two were alone in the great Hall.
Einon Hen leaned still further forward on his bench, his hands on his knees, and peered down at him out of his one eye. Then the fierce half-blind stare softened, and a smile of unexpected warmth deepened the lines of his face. ‘No, there was not anything else that you could do,’ he said, and the long bony finger that had touched Owain’s neck, touched the white scar that ran out of his sleeve. ‘And yet, if you were not taken in war, I think that you have known fighting. That has the look of an old spear-thrust.’
‘I was at the last battle, by Aquae Sulis,’ Owain said. ‘My father and my brother died there, but I was kicked on the head and the battle passed me by.’ He looked up unwaveringly into the old one-eyed face, remembering Vadir’s taunt. ‘That is true. I did not run away.’
‘No,’ said Einon Hen. ‘I believe that you did not run away.’
Owain drew off the soft leather shoes from the old man’s feet and thrust them under the bench, and made to rise, but Einon Hen stayed him. ‘And now you are a free man, and our own people are massing beyond the Sabrina crossings. When the allied hosts come together, do you carry your sword over into the British camp?’
Owain was silent a moment, then he said heavily, ‘I did not know until too late. I have taken the oath of brotherhood with the rest.’ Another silence, and then he added, as though exploring and discovering something as he went along, ‘But it is not that alone. Afterwards, if I live, I go to my own people, but not now. Beornwulf gave me a sword, and a while back I took it to the weapon stone in the forecourt, with others of the young warriors. We laughed about something—I don’t remember what—and one of them flung his arm across my shoulders. I forgot to hate him, and though he knew that I was British, he did not hate me …’ His voice stumbled away into silence, and he remained on one knee, looking up at Einon Hen as though asking for the old man’s understanding of what he did not understand himself.
The British Envoy nodded. ‘Aie, aie, it is in the truce. The Truce of the Spear. I have seen it work before.’
16
Wodensbeorg
NEXT morning the South Saxon war-host marched out from the King’s Place; Haegel at their head, riding with his hearth-companions about him, the lesser men who did not own a horse tramping on their own strong feet in the dust-cloud that the horsemen raised, with the pack beasts and the driven beef cattle among them; bowmen and spearmen and those whose weapon was the sword. But the horses were only for transport; the Saxon kind did not fight happily on horseback, and from the King to Owain they would all be foot soldiers when the time came to form the shield-wall.
In the open country north of Venta, three days’ march by the old Roman road, they came up with the eastern part of the combined Saxon war-host. Men from the Chiltern Hills following Cuthgils, the youngest of Ceawlin’s rebellious nephews: the fighting strength of all the little kingdoms east of the ancient hill track that they called the Icknield way; a score of war-bands out of Kent, but with nowhere the Kentish standard to be seen.
Haegel laughed when he saw the Kentish warriors trickling in along the road under the north chalk that had been old before the Legions came; flung back his head and laughed into the smoke of the camp-fire. ‘So long as Aethelbert may sit quiet in Cantiisburg and pretend to know nothing of what goes forward, it seems that he will not watch too closely to see what the young men of his border hundreds will do!’