* * * * *
Oswald awoke feeling cold. He sat up, and blinked as the morning sun beamed in through the entrance to the cave. The fire was smoking gently in the flat open space directly outside.
He glanced around the cave. Bork lay nearby, huddled in a bearskin that had already been in the cave when they reached it late last night. Of Edwin, there was no sign.
Oswald got up, and headed for the exit. Beyond it lay a small area of grass, ringed by boulders. Beyond them, the cliff plunged steeply down into the wooded valley. He leapt up onto a boulder and surveyed the awe-inspiring scene.
It had been dark when they reached the large cave that had previously housed Edwin’s entire robber band. Oswald had brief, snatched recollections of a weary ascent through trees and briars, stumbling up the cliff after Bork and Edwin, who seemed to know the place like the backs of their grubby hands, even in the darkest midnight. On staggering through the cave entrance, he had keeled over, and spared little thought for their surroundings.
The morning sun hung above a sea of trees that stretched from horizon to horizon, waving and tossing in the cool breeze. As far as Oswald could determine, he was deep in the heart of the Forest of Arden. No sign of human habitation thinned the wild expanse of oaks and elms; no smoke from cooking fires stained the horizon. This was the uttermost wild, unvisited by any but the toughest or the most foolhardy: the great old forest that had once spanned the entire country, and still remained the dark and malignant heart of the kingdom of Mercia.
‘So you like the view, Oswald?’
Oswald turned to see Edwin scrambling down the cliff towards the side of the cave, lugging a brace of rabbits. He reached the grassy shelf, and stood smiling at Oswald.
Oswald grunted. ‘It’s fine enough, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘If you’re a bear or a wolf.’
‘Or a wild man,’ replied Edwin cheerily. In the morning light, the threat of ghosts or trolls seemed laughable. ‘Or even a footpad.’
‘And that’s me, now, I have to admit,’ Oswald replied.
Edwin nodded shortly. He glanced over the forest.
‘The woods may seem grim from here,’ he added, ‘but look at them this way. It yields more food than the largest of the king’s estates, and provides better defence than all the king’s men. And it’s ours.
‘We have as rich lands as the king, and better defended. Defeat may keep the Welsh at bay for the while, but who would ever invade the Forest of Arden? What kind of madman would dream of penetrating as deep as this?’
‘I’d as soon swap it for fifty head of cattle and a few fields on the Welsh border!’ Oswald halted, ashamed of his outburst. ‘But you’re right - it’s a fine estate for a man. Though it must take some governing.’
‘We get unruly tenants,’ Edwin admitted wryly, ‘and some are pretty chary about paying their rent. But you learn to deal with them. And it’s their very savagery that makes us so well-defended.’
‘Until our garrison turns on us,’ Oswald replied.
A roar split the morning quiet. They turned to see Bork shambling blearily out into the sun, stretching his arms and yawning like a bear. He blinked sleepily at them.
‘What do we do today, then?’ he asked. He scratched himself. ‘Where’s breakfast?’
Edwin cast the rabbits down beside the smoking embers of the fire.
‘I set some snares, after you two wastrels dozed off last night,’ he said. ‘Get skinning them, Bork, and the quicker you do it, the sooner we’ll eat breakfast.’
The Dane pulled out a knife. He squatted down and proceeded to skin and prepare the rabbits.
‘You didn’t answer his first question,’ Oswald pointed out. ‘What do we do today?’
Edwin sat down with his back against a flat rock. He glanced up at the thane.
‘I don’t think we need do more than forage a little, and laze,’ he said, shifting into a more comfortable position. ‘It won’t be wise to go raiding for a while - our security depends on our obscurity much more than on the beasts of the forest. Our names and descriptions are being bandied around the entire kingdom just now, and there’s no point robbing people if you can’t find a buyer afterwards. There’s a man owns a tavern in Lichfield who’s usually willing to buy property without demanding witnesses. But I don’t think even he’d be too amenable to trading with us until the fuss dies down.’
Oswald scowled. ‘You talk like a merchant,’ he said. Raiding was something he could understand, but his family had always distanced themselves from trade.
Edwin raised a lazy eyebrow. ‘You’re not a king’s man anymore,’ he reminded his companion. ‘You’ve suffered a slight loss of rank. What’s the wergild for an outlaw, compared with that of a thane?’
Oswald felt the blood rush to his face.
‘You know full well that an outlaw’s family receives no compensation for his death.’
‘Well, there you go,’ Edwin said. ‘That’s how the law sees you now - worthless, just like me and that hairy heathen over there.’
Oswald’s hackles rose. ‘My lineage goes back to Woden,’ he said haughtily. ‘How many ancestors can you name?’
‘No one was quite sure who my father was, least of all my mother,’ Edwin said unashamedly. ‘But the eyes of the law see us at the same level, regardless of our differences in blood. But don’t let that concern you. You rank pretty high in my esteem.’
Oswald relaxed. ‘You accept that my blood makes me superior…’
‘No,’ Edwin interrupted. ‘Your skill with a sword and your experience of warfare - that’s what I value in you. Bork’s a good fighter - incomparably so, in fact, maybe better than you. I’m more of a thinker, a sneaker, a silver-tongued rogue, and a thief. I’m quick on my feet, but not so good in a fight. But you - you’ve fought in the king’s wars, and it’s your skills and knowledge that we want you for. Your blood is not at issue, as long as you make sure it doesn’t spill in the first fight.’
‘But without my blood, I would never have been born a thane,’ Oswald replied obstinately.
He could see some truth in Edwin’s argument, though it seemed more like the reasoning of a churchman than a noble. But his blood had made him a thane, and no change of rank would affect that. He was about to put this to the stony-faced thief when Bork rose from beside the fire.
‘Breakfast’s ready,’ he called. He glanced at the two men, challengingly. ‘Are you two going to argue your rank all day, or will you join me in a spit-roast rabbit or two?’
‘This is an important matter,’ Edwin said. ‘You wouldn’t understand, heathen.’ He wasn’t entirely joking.
‘You can call me a heathen if you wish,’ replied the Dane tranquilly. ‘But any man who knows anything worth knowing knows that Odin breathed the breath of life into man in the dawn of time, and we all share that breath. Whatever their rank, any man worth the name can fight, and has the chance to join the Allfather in his hall.’
He sat down with a haunch of rabbit-meat and proceeded to devour it hungrily. Edwin and Oswald exchanged glances; Oswald grinned and shook his head. Edwin laughed, and smiled back. Together they went to eat their breakfast.
Despite Edwin’s intention to lie low for the next few months, it was not long before Oswald’s initiation into the art of daylight robbery.