Almost thirty men. Meirion’s response. Not trained fighters, but hardy, knowing the land, and filled—each one of them—with anger bright and cold as a winter sun. This wasn’t a vast invading fleet of dragon-prows from Erling lands. This was a raid, skulking through their land. They would fear the northmen, always, but they would not run from them.
It was crippled Ryce’s daughter, his surviving daughter, who had come upon the raiders and carried—like a queen of legend—needful tidings back of where they were bound. A woman of the Cyngael, worthy of song. And they all knew, in the lands and villages around, what had been done to her sister.
They would reach Brynnfell half a day before the Erlings did.
The afternoon of the day she saw the raiders, Meirion—in a frenzy born of waiting—took Elyn’s pallet apart. She began to carry the straw and bedding up the tor. Her mother and the other women saw what she was doing and set themselves to help, gathering wood, arranging it on the flat summit. All of them working, women walking up and down the hill. Late in the day, the sun westering and the last crescent of the blue moon rising (no moons at all tomorrow), they lit a bonfire there for Elyn. Only a girl. No one important at all, by any measure you might ever think to use.
Bern could not shake a premonition, death hovering like some dark bird, one of Ingavin’s ravens, waiting.
Fog among encroaching hills. Sounds muffled, vision limited. Even when day broke and the mist lifted, that sense of oppression, of a waiting stillness in the land, lingered. He felt they were being watched. They probably were, though they saw no one. This was a strange land, Bern thought, different from any he’d known, and they were moving away from the sea. He had no illusions of being prophetic, of any kind of truesight or knowing. He told himself this was no more than apprehension. He’d never been in a battle, and they were heading towards one.
But it wasn’t fear. It really wasn’t. He had memories of fear. The night before his Jormsvik fight he’d lain beside a prostitute, hadn’t slept at all, listened to her untroubled breathing. He’d been quite certain it was the last night he’d know. Fear had been within him then; there was something different now. He was wrapped in a sense of strangeness, something unknown. Fog in these hills and the nature of the lives men lived. His father entangled in it, much as he might want to deny that.
Denial would be a lie, simple as that. Thorkell had told him not to let them sail to the Cyngael lands. Brand had killed the last of the Volgans for his deception, yet here they were now, on the quest Ivarr had tried to deceive them into taking on.
Brand One-eye and the other leaders had seized upon Ivarr’s idea: vengeance and the Volgan’s sword. A way out of humiliation. So they were doing what he’d wanted them to do, even though they’d killed him for it and tossed him to the sea. It could make you feel things had gone awry.
Brand had spoken of it calmly enough, sailing west and then north with the wind to where they’d beached. How this was a bad time for them to suffer defeat. (Was there a good time, Bern had wondered.) How claiming the sword would be a triumph, hewn brilliantly out of failure and defeat. A talisman against ambitious men in the north who thought they could be king and impose their will upon the Jormsvikings.
Bern wasn’t so sure. It seemed to him that these named reasons were covering something else. That Brand Leofson was wishing he’d thought of Ivarr’s quest himself, that what the one-eyed man was seeing, in his mind, was glory.
That would be fair enough, ordinarily. What else, as the skalds sang to harp by hearth fire all winter, was there for the brave to seek? Wealth dies with a man, his name lives ever.
Ingavin’s halls were for warriors. Ripe, pliant maidens with red lips and yellow hair did not offer mead (and themselves) to farmers and smiths at the golden tables of the gods.
But his father had told them not to come this way.
They weren’t even certain where they were going in these hills and narrow valleys. Brand and Carsten had known the harbour from years before, but neither of them, nor Garr Hoddson, had ever been as far inland as Brynnfell. They’d started east, thirty riders, sixty on foot, fifty left to the ships to get them offshore if they were found. Scarcely enough for that, Bern had thought, but he was one of the youngest here, what did he know?
Carsten had urged a fast out-and-back raid with just the horsemen, since they were only going to kill one man and find one thing. Brand and Garr had disagreed. Ap Hywll’s farm would be defended. They’d have to go more slowly, with men on foot, a larger force. Bern, on Gyllir, was one of the horsemen sweeping both sides of the path (just a track, really) as they went.
They saw no one. A good thing, you might have said, preserving their secrecy—but Bern couldn’t shake the feeling that others were seeing them. They didn’t belong here—somehow the land would know it—and the sea, their real haven, was farther away every moment.
On the second day, going through a range of hills in a drizzle of rain, one of the outriders had found a woodcutter and brought him back, hands tied behind him, running before the horse at sword-point.
The man was small, dark, raggedly clothed. His teeth were rotting. He didn’t speak Erling; none of them spoke Cyngael. They hadn’t expected to be here, hadn’t chosen any of those who did know the tongue. This was supposed to have been a raid on undefended Anglcyn burhs. That’s what Ivarr had paid them for.
They tried talking to the woodcutter in Anglcyn, which should have been close enough. The man didn’t know that language either. He’d soiled himself in terror, Bern saw.
Brand, impatient, edgy, angry now, had drawn his sword, seized the man’s left arm and sliced his hand off at the wrist. The woodcutter, hair plastered with rain, drenched in his sweat and stink, had stared blankly at the stump of his wrist.
“Brynnfell!” Brand had roared in the falling rain. “Brynnfell! Where?”
The woodcutter had looked up at him a moment, vacant-eyed, then fainted dead away. Brand had sworn savagely, spat, looked around as if for someone to blame. Garr, scowling, put a sword through the Cyngael where he lay. They’d moved on. The rain continued to fall.
Bern’s feeling of oppression had begun to grow then. They’d travelled through the evening, stopping only briefly at night. They heard animals moving, owls overhead and in the trees on the slopes around, saw nothing at all. Before morning they’d come out of the hills into more open lowlands though the mist was still there.
There would be farms here, but Brand thought Brynn’s was another day away, at least. He was going by half-remembered stories. They made a stop before dawn, doled out provisions, drank at the river just south of them, moved on as the sun came up.
Bern thought of his father, mending a barn door on Rabady, a sunset hour. Glory, it occurred to him, might come at a heavy price. It might not be the thing for every man.
He leaned forward, patted Gyllir on the neck. They continued east, a forest appearing north of them, the river murmuring south, running beside their path and then turning away. Bern didn’t like the secretive, green-grey closeness of this land. The sun went down, the last crescent of the blue moon was in front of them, and then overhead, and then behind. They stopped for another meal, continued through the night. They were mercenaries of Jormsvik, could do without sleep for a night or two to gain the advantages of surprise and fear. Speed was the essence of a raid: you landed, struck, left death and terror, took what you wanted and were gone. If you couldn’t do that you didn’t belong, you shouldn’t be on the dragon-ships, you were as soft as those you came to kill.
You might as well be a farmer or a smith.
It was a brighter morning, at least. They seemed to have left the mists behind. They went on.
Late in the day, with a breeze and white clouds overhead, they were met by Brynn ap Hywll and a company of men at a place where they were moving up a slope and the Cyngael were waiting above them. Not soft, not surprised, or afraid.
Looking up, Bern saw his father there.
ALUN DIDN’T S
EE IVARR RAGNARSON. The sun was behind the Erlings, forcing him to squint. Brynn had taken the higher ground, but the light might become a problem. The numbers were close, and they had twenty men in reserve, hidden on either side of the slope. The Erlings had horsemen, twenty-five or so, he guessed. They weren’t the best riders in the world, but horses made a difference. And these were Jormsvikings they were about to face, with a company that was mostly farm labourers.
It was better than it might have been, but it wasn’t good.
The Erlings had stopped at first sight of them. Alun’s instinct would have been to charge while the horses were halted, use the downslope to effect, but Brynn had given orders to wait. Alun wasn’t sure why.
He found out, soon enough. Ap Hywll called out, the big voice carrying down the slope, “Hear me! You have made a mistake. You will not get home. Your ships will be taken before you return to them. We had warning of your coming.” He was speaking in Anglcyn.
“That is a lie!” A one-eyed man, easily as big as Brynn, moved his horse forward. Battles began this way in the tales, Alun thought. Challenge, counter-challenge. Speeches for the harpers. This wasn’t a tale. He was still scanning the Erlings for the man he needed to kill.
Brynn had the same thought, it seemed. “You know it is true, or we wouldn’t be here with more men than you have. Surrender Ivarr Ragnarson and give hostages and you’ll sail alive from these shores.”
“I shit upon that!” the big man shouted. And then, “Ragnarson’s dead, anyhow.”
Alun blinked. He looked at Thorkell Einarson, beside him. The red-bearded Erling was staring at the opposing forces. His own people.
“How so?” Brynn cried. “How is he dead?”
“By my blade at sea, for deceiving us.”
Amazingly, Brynn ap Hywll threw his head back and laughed. The sound was startling, utterly unexpected. No one spoke, or moved. Brynn controlled himself. “Then what in Jad’s name are you doing here?”
“Come to kill you,” the other man said. His face had reddened at the laughter. “Are you ready to find your god?”
A silence. Late afternoon, late summer. Late in life, really, for both of the men speaking now.
“I’ve been ready a long time,” said Brynn, gravely. “I don’t need a hundred men to go with me. Tell me your name.”
“Brand Leofson, of Jormsvik.”
“You lead this company?”
“I do.”
“They accept that?”
“What does that mean?”
“They will follow orders you give?”
“Kill any man who doesn’t.”
“Of course you will. Very well. You leave two ships to us, twenty hostages of our choosing, and all your weapons. The rest of you will be allowed to go. I will send a rider to Llywerth and another to Prince Owyn in Cadyr—they will let you leave. I cannot speak to what will happen when you sail past the Anglcyn coast.”
“Two ships!” The Erling’s voice was incredulous. “We never leave hostages, you shit-smeared fool! We never leave our ships!”
“Then the ships will be taken when you die in these lands. You will never leave, any of you. Decide. I am not of a mind to talk.” His voice was cold now.
One of the Erlings came forward on foot, stood by the stirrup of the one-eyed man. They whispered together. Alun looked at Thorkell again. Saw that the other man was gazing over at Brynn.
“How do we know you aren’t lying about Llywerth and Cadyr? How would they know about us?” It was the second Erling, standing by the one named Leofson.
A horseman twitched his reins and moved forward to sit his mount beside Brynn. “You know because I tell you it is true. We rode through the spirit wood, three of us, to bring warning of your coming here.”
“Through the spirit—! That will be a lie! Who are … ?”
The Erling fell silent. He’d sorted the answer to his own question. It was the accent, Alun realized. The flawless, courtly Anglcyn tones.
“My name is Athelbert, son of Aeldred,” said the young man beside Brynn, who had ridden with them through the godwood to serve a cause that wasn’t his own. “Our fyrd killed sixty of you. I will be unspeakably happy to add to that number here. My father has sent a ship from Drengest, right behind yours, with a warning for Cadyr. They will have had it days ago, while you were coming here. Ap Hywll speaks truth. If we do not send to stop them, the Cyngael will take your ships or drive them offshore, and you will have nowhere to go. You are dead men, where you stand. Jormsvik will never be the same. They will mock your names forever. You cannot possibly imagine the pleasure it gives me to say these words.”
A murmuring among the Erling host below them. Alun heard anger but no fear. He hadn’t expected to. He saw some of them begin to draw blades and axes. With a hard, fierce sense of need, he unsheathed his sword. It had come, it had finally come.
“Wait,” said Thorkell quietly beside him.
“They’re drawing weapons!” Alun rasped.
“I see it. Wait. They will win this fight.”
“They will not!”
“Trust me. They will. Ap Hywll knows it too. Numbers are close, but they have horsemen and fighters. Brynn has his thirty men but the rest are farmers with scythes and sticks. Think!”
His voice carried towards the front. Later, Alun decided he had meant it to do so. Brynn turned his head slightly.
“They know they cannot leave these shores alive,” he said, softly.
“I think they do,” Thorkell Einarson said, still quietly, speaking Cyngael. “It won’t matter. They cannot give you hostages or ships and go back to Jormsvik. They will die first.”
“So we fight. Kill enough of them so that tomorrow or the next—”
“And what will your wives and mothers say, and the fathers of these two princes?” Thorkell never raised his voice.
Brynn turned around. Alun saw his eyes in the late-afternoon light. “They will say that the Erlings, accursed of Jad and the world, slew yet more good men before their time. They will say what they have always said.”
“There is a way out.”
Brynn stared at him. “I am listening,” he said. Alun felt the breeze blowing, making their banners snap.
“We challenge him,” Thorkell said. “He wins, they are allowed to leave. He loses, they yield the two ships and hostages.”
“You just said—”
“They cannot surrender ships. They can lose a fight. Honour requires they deal fairly then. They will. This is Jormsvik.”
“That difference matters enough?”
Thorkell nodded. “Always has.”
“Good,” said Brynn, after a moment, smiling. “Good. I fight him. If he will do it.”
Looking back, Alun remembered that four people said No at the same moment, and he was one of them.
But the voice that continued, when the others stopped in surprise, was a woman’s. “No!” she said again.
Alun turned, they all did. On the side slope, quite close in fact, on horseback, were the lady wife and the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll. He saw Rhiannon, saw her looking at him, and his heart thumped, a barrage of memories and images falling like arrows from the bright sky.
It was the mother who had spoken. Brynn was gazing at her. She shifted her mount to come forward among them.
“I told you to stay at home,” he said, mildly enough.
“I know you did, my lord. Chastise me after. But hear me first. The challenge is proper. I heard what he said. But it is not yours this time.”
“It has to be mine. Enid, they came to kill me.”
“And must not be allowed the pleasure. My dear, you are the summit and glory of all men living.”
“I like the sound of that,” said Brynn ap Hywll.
“I imagine you do,” said the lady Enid. “You are vain. It is a sin. You are also, I grieve to tell you, old and short-winded, and fat.”
“I am not fat! I am—”
“You are, and your left knee is aching as
we speak, and your back is stiff each day by this hour.”
“He’s old too! That one-eyed captain carries his years—”
“He’s a raider, my lord.” It was Thorkell. “I know the name. He is still a fighting man, my lord. What she says is truth.”
“Are you here to shame me, wife? Are you saying I cannot defeat—?”
“My love. Three princes and their sons stood aside for you twenty-five years ago.”
“I see no reason why—”
“Do not leave me,” said Enid. “Not this way.”
Alun heard birdsong. The doings of men here, the wrack and storm of them, hardly mattering at all. It was a summer’s day. The birds would be here when this was over, one way or another. Brynn was gazing at his wife. She dismounted, without assistance, and knelt on the grass before her husband. Brynn cleared his throat.
It was Athelbert who broke the stillness. He twitched his reins and moved towards the Erlings, down the slope a little way. “Hear me. We are told that you cannot surrender the ships. You must understand you are going to die, if so. A challenge is now offered you. Choose a man, we do the same. If you are victorious, you will be permitted to sail from here.”
“And if we lose?”
They were going to accept. Alun knew it, before they’d even heard the terms. It was in the quickened voice of the one-eyed captain. These were mercenaries, bought to fight, not berserkirs lusting after death. He was feeling something strange, a circling of time.
Three princes and their sons. His father had been one of those sons, twenty-five years ago. Alun’s age, very nearly. Brynn had been, too. What was unfolding here felt as if it were part of a skein spun back to that strand in Llywerth.
Athelbert was speaking again. “You forfeit two ships, your weapons, including those on the ships, and ten hostages as surety, to be released in the spring. Not a surrender. A challenge lost.”
“How do we get home without weapons? If we meet anyone at all—”