For Lord and Land Page 13

  Before Beobrand could reply to Offa, Dunna came to sit on his gift-stool at the centre of the high table.

  “Lovely, is she not?” Dunna asked.

  “Indeed she is,” replied Offa. “We were just saying you are a man of true wealth.”

  Dunna had laughed at that and clapped his hands for the food to be served. Despite the poor quality of his clothes and the plainness of the building that had none of the carvings and ornaments of the great halls of the land, the fare that was brought out by a couple of women was rich and plentiful. As the evening progressed, Beobrand relaxed, surprised at the lavish food and drink on Dunna’s table. There was a thick hare stew, griddled trout and sweet pastries adorned with bright summer fruits.

  Offa spoke with Dunna, keeping him occupied. Beobrand was content to drink in peace, watching the interaction between their host and his wife. Geatfleda was attentive and smiled whenever the lord of the hall spoke. She appeared to truly love the man, despite his age and dishevelled aspect. Again Beobrand marvelled at the power of women and how the bonds of love and affection can never be truly understood.

  At first light, they rode on, refreshed and sated. Dunna and Geatfleda came out of their hall to wave them on their way and Beobrand noted that all of the riders turned in their saddles to wave back.

  Clouds had gathered in the north over night, but the day remained dry and they made good progress along the wide road left by the men of Roma. It was late morning when they reached the great Wall.

  “By Christ’s teeth,” said Offa, gazing up at the crumbling gatehouse that rose above the wall. “I had heard tell of the Wall, but I had never thought to see it. And I did not believe what I had been told.” He whistled low, gazing at the high stone wall that followed the land into the distance to east and west.

  “It is humbling, is it not?” said Beobrand. As always when he saw the Wall, he was unable to understand how such an edifice had been built. It was constructed of great slabs of grey stone, with gates and towers at intervals along its seemingly endless length.

  Beobrand led them through the gap in the Wall where timber gates would once have blocked their way. Their horses’ hooves clattered on the cobbles, echoing around them as they passed. Offa and the men from the south craned their necks to look at the Wall and the buildings, their mouths agape.

  “Was this built by giants as the scops say?” asked Offa. “I had thought it the fancy of song-spinners, but now that I see it with my own eyes, I can believe it.”

  “Coenred tells me it was the men of Roma, far to the south, who built the Wall and this road we ride upon. They ruled these lands long ago.”

  Offa nodded.

  “In my heart I know this to be true, and yet I see here the work of a giant’s hands, not those of men.”

  They paused briefly to the south of the Wall. The East Angelfolc stood by their mounts, chewing their food and staring at the undulating line of the stone structure as it stretched off into the hazed distance, dividing the land. Behind the Wall, in the north, the sky grew darker as the clouds rolled southward towards them.

  The clouds chased them south as they pressed on towards Corebricg. The sky behind them was black and ominous and the riders’ mood soured as the day’s light dimmed. A cold wind picked up, pushing them on.

  They passed the ruins of more Roman buildings, all broken red tiles and cracked bricks, before clattering over the remains of a great bridge across the Tine. The same cunning that had erected the Wall held aloft the huge blocks of stone that arched over the water below. Only one of the arches had collapsed and was now bridged with stout planks of timber.

  “Will it hold?” asked Offa, his eyes wide at the drop to the stone-strewn river.

  Beobrand had passed over the bridge many times before and always felt the thrill of peril at crossing so high above the wide water.

  “It will hold,” he said, before dismounting and leading his horse over the timber portion of the bridge.

  They crossed without incident and cantered south. There was the scent of smoke in the air and they could all sense they were close to their destination; to where warhosts would meet. The first splatters of cold rain were beating at their backs when they spotted the tents and standards of the Bernician host.

  Beobrand reined in his mount and stared down at the gathered fyrd. Smoke from many cook fires hung over the jumbled mass of shelters and men.

  The force was arrayed to the west of the road. A good place for a battle, thought Beobrand. The land sloped towards the south, meaning an enemy coming from Deira would need to meet them at a disadvantage. And the western flank of the Bernicians was protected by a dense wood.

  Further off to the south, blurred by distance and the rain that had begun to fall more heavily, Beobrand could make out the dark sprawl of another host.

  This place was close to where Oswald had led them to victory against Cadwallon all those years ago. Beobrand recalled the storm then, the crash of thunder and flash of lightning as they had met the Waelisc in battle in the darkest part of that storm-rent night. Beobrand peered into the distance, squinting as the rain fell harder, but he could not make out any of the banners and standards of the far-off Deirans or even the closer Bernicians.

  “Who do you see?” he asked Attor, who had ridden up next to him.

  Attor raised a hand to shield his eyes.

  “Ethelwin’s black raven banner,” he said, “and Wynhelm’s red wyrm. And Alhfrith’s blue stallion too. There are others, but I cannot make them out at this distance. Those three are easy enough to see though.”

  Beobrand gave him a questioning glance.

  “They are on the move,” explained Attor.

  “On the move?”

  “Yes, lord. See?” He pointed. “They are riding southward, towards the Deirans. No more than a dozen or so riders.”

  A movement closer to them drew their attention. Six riders cantered up the slope from the Bernician camp. Offa and the rest of the men drew in around Beobrand. They sat astride their mounts as the wind and rain buffeted them.

  As the riders reached them, Beobrand was pleased to see that he recognised the leader, a thickset man with a red-veined face and long thinning hair that was pulled back and held at the nape of his neck by a leather thong.

  “Well met, Reodstan,” Beobrand said. He liked the man. He was a good fighter, loyal and strong.

  Reodstan lowered his head in recognition.

  “Lord Beobrand,” he replied, taking in the riders around him with a warrior’s eye. “You are well come to this place. Though I wish you had not brought this rain with you.” Reodstan had fought against Cadwallon too, and Beobrand wondered what dark memories he had from that night.

  “I see Ethelwin and Alhfrith Atheling are on the move.”

  Reodstan glanced over his shoulder.

  “Aye,” he said. “Oswine sent a messenger. They ride to parley, though what for, I know not. Oswiu wants this fight and Ethelwin will give it to him.”

  “Well, I will tell you what they say,” said Beobrand, grinning at the man.

  “Lord?”

  “We did not ride all this way to miss the fun. Attor, Offa,” Beobrand snapped. “With me. We ride to parley. The rest of you, follow Reodstan here down to the camp. And Fraomar, find Elmer.”

  “Beobrand,” Reodstan called out, “do not do anything rash.”

  But Beobrand ignored him. Spurring his mount forward, he rode past Reodstan and the others, urging his horse into a gallop. He looked back over his shoulder as the wind pulled his cloak to stream out behind him. Offa and Attor were close behind.

  The rain scythed down from the dark clouds, bitter and cold on his face. But despite the chill omen of the black sky, he grinned, for he could smell battle on the breeze now, as surely as he could detect the smoke from the fires and the tangy odour of sweat from his horse. And as they galloped down the hill, throwing up great clods of earth from their horses’ hooves, Beobrand’s concerns and worries washed away from him
.

  War was coming and he rode to meet it.

  Chapter 13

  Sulis’ back hurt. With every jolt of her pony’s gait, she felt as though she had been stabbed in the kidneys. She gritted her teeth against the pain and continued riding in silence. She would not slow them down. The longer they took, the more chance that something terrible would have happened during her absence. Her mind was filled with horrific thoughts of death. In her dreams the night before, as she lay exhausted beneath the trees, she had relived the sight of Leofman’s broken body, the anguish in his eyes that he had allowed Eadwig to be taken.

  She would never forget the moment Alfwold and she had found her husband. Leofman had clung to her, digging his fingers into her arm so hard that he had left bruises on her pale skin.

  She had not been able to tear her gaze away from Swiga’s mottled, fly-blown corpse. Her mind was a maelstrom of terror that her son might be lying amongst the rocks, his tiny body blood-stained, his skin as pallid and lifeless as the stone.

  “I promised to protect you both!” Leofman said, his words desperate. “I should have stopped them.” He’d sobbed then, and she had held him in her arms, cradling his head as she had cradled Eadwig when he fell on the ice last winter and sprained his wrist.

  She had once, long ago, held Osgar that way too, comforting him, consoling him when he cried. His father had said she made him soft, but a boy needed his mother’s love. And Osgar had not been soft. He had defied that fat Bernician bastard, Fordraed, and his men. They had beaten her and she had not spoken. When they had threatened Osgar, he had squared his shoulders and refused to speak. That was when they had started hitting the boy. He was so small, so weak. But never a coward, never soft. He had not spoken. It was she who had been soft. But what mother would not have spoken out to save her child from pain and torment?

  The pony stumbled as they forded a shallow river. The sudden movement sent a lancing agony into her back. The ache radiated into her distended belly, but she was glad of it. Pain of the body she could cope with. It was the suffering of her soul and the black memories that filled her head with the beating bat wings of dread that she could not abide.

  She recalled Osgar’s eyes as the huge warrior with plaited beard had sawed his seax into the boy’s throat. She could picture vividly the colour of the blood as it fountained and how her son’s eyes had filled with horror and fear. She had been meant to protect him. She had given herself to those brutes to keep Osgar alive, and for what? To watch his lifeblood pour from him in moments? She had screamed until her throat was raw and she could not breathe, but the rough warriors had pulled her away and thrown her, trussed and bound over the back of a horse. She had wanted to run to Osgar, to hold her dying son to her breast and whisper to him that everything would be well. She was his mother and it was her role to comfort him, even in that final moment when he departed middle earth and what was left of her life was shattered completely. The warriors had denied her even that, and she had been carried away, leaving behind her dead son all alone in the mud beside their home as the flames burst from the thatch, sending billowing clouds of smoke as black as despair towards the heavens.

  She had been lost then for a long time. Some part of her had died and she did not believe she would ever find it again. And then one day she had met Leofman.

  At the mouth of the mine, she had seen the same agony in her husband’s eyes as she had felt all those years before. He was Eadwig’s father and it was his role to protect the boy. He had failed and was distraught.

  “You did all you could,” she’d whispered to him, stroking his hair whilst looking down in shock at his battered and bleeding body. “You are but one man and there were many of them. And yet you still wounded one, you say.”

  He grimaced.

  “Aye, I cut him badly. But you are right.” He’d tried to push himself up, grunting with the pain. “I am just one old man.”

  “I did not say you were old.”

  Leofman grimaced.

  “Maybe not. But it is the truth of it. If I were still a young man, they would not have beaten me so easily.”

  “Hush, husband. You cannot blame yourself.”

  It was in that moment she had decided to ride to Ubbanford. They needed a younger man to confront those who had done this, a warrior who would not be afraid to stand up to swordsmen and spear-men. She had a deep hatred for the warriors of Bernicia. They had stolen her beautiful boy from her, violated her, enslaved her and broken her spirit. And yet there was one gesith in the north she sometimes thought of. He was not one of them, not one of the Angelfolc, but a Waelisc. He had saved her. In spite of her twisted fury and loathing, he had rescued her, first from her own devastating pain and then from Beobrand’s raging hatred and need for vengeance.

  “Do you need to halt?”

  She started at the voice. She had been clutching the reins tightly, staring at the path ahead, so wrapped in the hurts of her body and her mind that she had not noticed Cynan swing his horse around and ride back to her. She looked up at him now. He was more handsome than she had remembered, broader of shoulder, harder of face. And where he had once seemed uncertain of himself in her presence, he now exuded the power that comes from leading men into battle. As soon as she had seen him in Ubbanford, gazing down at her from the saddle of his bay mare, she had known she had not been mistaken to leave Leofman in Alfwold’s care. If there was any man who could help them, it was Cynan.

  She shook her head, lowering her gaze. Her back screamed at her and her full bladder ached. By Woden and all the gods, how she wished she did not have the weak body of a woman. She might not have the strength of these men, but she would not slow them down. They were still at least two days from the farm she shared with Leofman, Eadwig and Alfwold.

  “I am well,” she mumbled. “We should ride on.”

  Cynan expertly guided his mare close to Sulis’ pony. With a lithe movement, he grabbed the reins, tugging them from her grasp. Again she cursed her own weakness.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “You are exhausted and need to rest.”

  She grabbed for the reins, but he held them tightly.

  “We stopped not long ago,” she said, her voice cracking.

  He pulled her pony to a halt and stared into her eyes.

  “Would you have us ride to save your son, only for him to find he has lost his mother on the journey?”

  The rider who was bringing up the rear reached them.

  “Is there problem?” he asked, his accent strange and musical.

  “Sulis needs to rest a while, Halinard,” replied Cynan. “Ride on to the others and tell them to make for those birch trees. I will ride with Sulis.”

  Halinard nodded. Touching his heels to his horse’s flanks, he cantered after Brinin and Ingwald who rode together some way further along the trail they followed over the hilly land of Bernicia.

  Halinard was a Frank and she liked him instinctively more than she liked most men. He had caused some commotion when he had ridden out of the rising dawn that morning. For a time, Cynan had squinted into the glare of the sun, trying to make out who pursued them. Brinin and Ingwald had readied their shields and swords, but Cynan had shaken his head.

  “Whoever chases us has surely ridden through the night and must have come from Ubbanford, so they are a friend.” He had peered into the east, shading his eyes with his hand. “They may not be friendly at the moment, but we will not fight them, whoever it is. This is my doing and I will not allow either of you to be blamed.” A moment later, he had turned to them with a shrug. “I don’t know why he rides after us, but it is the Frank.”

  “Halinard?” asked Brinin.

  “You know any other Franks?”

  Halinard The Frank turned out to be a man of few words, but after he had dismounted, he shared some of the bread and cheese he carried in his saddle bags while the men probed him with questions until they understood how he came to be following them.

  It seemed his daughter, Joveta, had
found Ardith crying. They were friends and Ardith soon told Joveta what they had decided and how Brinin had ridden into the west with Sulis, Cynan and Ingwald. Joveta had gone to Halinard’s wife, Gisela, with the news. The women all agreed that to aid Sulis was the right thing to do, but there was no consoling Ardith over the loss of her beloved Brinin. On hearing this, Brinin had scowled and walked over to the horses, where he listened to the rest of the story with his back to the group.

  “Ardith is afeared that something happen to Brinin,” Halinard said at last in his lilting voice. “Joveta and her mother said it would be better if I ride with you. Safer if more of us.”

  “What did you think?” asked Ingwald.

  Halinard looked at Cynan’s man as if he were simple.

  “It matters nothing what I think,” he said. “Gisela had made her mind already.”

  The men all nodded knowingly. Halinard, a large man with broad shoulders, smiled ruefully. This Gisela was clearly a woman not to be trifled with. Sulis thought she would like to have met her.

  They had reached the birch now, and Halinard, Ingwald and Brinin had dismounted to rest. A stiffening breeze shook the branches above them and Sulis shivered. To the north, the sky was bruised and sombre. There would be rain soon, she thought. Her back throbbed and she hesitated, unsure how she would be able to climb down from her pony. An instant later, Cynan was at her side. He lifted her down easily. She nodded her thanks and walked painfully under the cover of the trees where she could relieve herself without being seen by the menfolk. Gods, it felt as though she needed to piss all the time. She did not recall it being so when she had carried Osgar or Eadwig. Nor had her back pained her so then. But she was older now, she supposed, her body weaker than it had been. Adjusting her dress, she made her way back through the bracken to where the men waited with the horses.

  Halinard said something and the others laughed. Sulis tensed, suddenly feeling very alone. She wished she had a woman friend like Ardith or Gisela, someone to speak to of all the things that men did not seem to care about or understand. It had been many years since she had spent any real time with women. With Fordraed’s raid on her home, Sulis had not only lost Osgar and her husband in the ensuing battle between Penda and Oswald at Maserfelth, she had also lost her friends. Some had been slain, others had been taken with her to Ubbanford.