Dawn Wind (26 page)

It was time, Owain thought suddenly, that Athelis settled that matter with Brand the Smith. Lilla had always treated Horn exactly as she treated Bryni; but he was not at all sure now, watching them, that Horn felt towards her in the same way as Bryni did, and he had a feeling that even Lilla was ready for a change. Certainly it seemed that she was enjoying having cherries hung in her ears.

She was looking up at Horn, laughing, and swinging the skirts of her blue kirtle in time to her memory of the piping.

All at once Owain had a sudden feeling of other eyes beside his own, watching Lilla—watching her keenly. He looked round, and saw Vadir Cedricson leaning against the wall almost within arm’s length of him. The moon shone full on the man’s thin disdainful face, and the pale eyes, widened a little in suddenly awakened interest, were plain to see. In that moment he knew that Vadir was seeing Lilla for the first time as a man sees a woman.

Anxiety stirred in him. He had always liked Lilla better than her sister; there was more in her to like. He wanted Horn for her because he thought that the boy would make her happy; he did not want for her that look in the eyes of Vadir the Hault … Then he shrugged at himself for a fool, worrying over the girl as though he were the grey-bearded father of the household; he laughed and drained the ale cup in his hand, and went to get it filled again.

As he did so, the shout went up that it was time for the bride-race. The groom had scrambled to his feet, thrusting his sword back into its sheath, and after him all the unmarried men who owned horses or had been able to borrow them for the occasion began to shake clear of the rest and jostle their way out towards the back of the steading. And when Owain looked again, Vadir was nowhere to be seen.

The girls were crowding round Helga, pulling her to her feet and thrusting her out to stand beside the fire. There were hurried farewells with Lilla and her mother, and then as a burst of shouting rose from behind the steading, they scattered, leaving her to stand there very much alone and looking suddenly frightened as though for the first time she understood what it was all about.

But almost in the same instant they heard the horsemen tussling at the gate, voices and smothered laughter and trampling of hooves, and then the dark shapes of a horse and rider swept round the far end of the house-place into the firelight, and Wiermund was stooping from the saddle to catch Helga’s hand and haul her up before him. ‘Up! Come up with you!’ She set her foot on his in the stirrup and hopped, and the young man heaved, both of them laughing now, and then she was across his saddle-bow, and the horse which he had barely checked, broke forward out of the firelight, out through the steading gate, and in the moment’s hush they heard the hoof-beats drumming away over the levels towards the settlement.

And then, hard on the heels of the bridegroom came all the rest, jostling for place at the gate and in the narrow ways between the outbuildings; and the girls ran together squealing and pretending fear. Neck and neck, the first two horsemen rounded the end of the house-place, and one sprang into the lead, a small man riding a black horse whose white forehead blaze shone silver in the firelight, and Owain saw with a swift tightening of the heart that it was Vadir.

Heedless of the poor brute’s snorting terror, Vadir swung the horse in a trampling curve to the very verge of the fire, and swooping low from the saddle in full gallop, caught Lilla and swept her up before him in one swift movement, and was away into the dark.

After him dashed Horn the next rider, on Wagtail, and having missed the girl he wanted, caught up the nearest, and plunged on out of the firelight, and for a few moments the crowded garth was full of horsemen and flying shadows, shrieking and laughter, as man after man caught up a girl before him and headed for the gateway. Then the last of them was gone, and the garth seemed very empty.

So the bride would be carried off to her new home and her new life surrounded by a flying skein of horsemen, and when the loop of riders had flung themselves three times sunwise about the house for good fortune, they would come flying back over the levels, with a last draught of ale from the house-lord’s own horn for whoever set his girl down first at the steading gate.

Already the rest of the wedding party were crowding out to the gateway to watch for their return, several of the men pulling blazing branches from the fire to serve as torches as they went. And Owain, on the outskirts of the throng, found Bryni suddenly beside him. ‘Did you see?’ Bryni sounded as though he were speaking through shut teeth, and when Owain looked round, his face even in that fitful light showed flushed.

‘Yes, I saw. Horn must be quicker off the mark another time.’

Bryni’s hands were clutched at his sides. ‘The swine! The little swine!’

‘Soft now,’ Owain said, speaking quickly, under cover of the cheerful uproar in the gate. ‘Any man riding in the bride-race has a perfect right to catch up any girl he chooses. You know that.’

‘I don’t believe he has ever ridden a bride-race before tonight; he’d scorn such sport,’ Bryni said in a furious rush. ‘I don’t care what rights he has, if he doesn’t keep his claws off Lilla, I
will
kill him.’

Owain’s hand came down on his shoulder. To any of the bridal party who chanced to look that way—but they were all craning their necks out over the levels—it would have seemed a mere casual gesture, but his fingers bit into the boy’s flesh until he wriggled. ‘Listen to me, my lad; you have had quite as much ale as you have room for. For tonight the man is a guest within your gates, and if you can’t behave, I shall take you here and now and put that hot head of yours in a bucket of water to cool it.’

Bryni drew a long breath that was like a sob; but when he spoke again his voice was calmer. ‘I’ll behave—but he’s not my guest on other nights of the year.’

Owain let his own breath go carefully. Other nights of the year must look after themselves. He released Bryni’s shoulder, and pushed forward with him into the gateway.

Beyond the gold of the makeshift torches the levels lay white and quiet in the moonlight, empty to the dark barrier of oak scrub beyond the dyke; and as they strained eyes and ears towards it, a faint pulse of sound woke in the stillness, a rhythm soft as the beat of a moth’s wings. ‘Here they come!’ a woman cried, as a flicker of moving darkness shook clear of the oak scrub and came sweeping down the far side of the dyke towards the plank bridge. Everyone was shouting now, shouting and waving the stumps of firebrands, and through the uproar the drum of hooves swept nearer. A second horseman was out of the scrub now, then a knot of two or three, but the first was across the dyke and heading straight and swift as an arrow for the tossing torches in the gate.

Bryni was thrusting his way into the forefront of the company and Owain kept close behind him. He had never doubted who the first rider would be, and now he could see the black horse thundering towards them, the rider bending forward over the girl held in the crook of his arm. ‘It is Vadir!’ someone shouted. ‘Hammer of the Gods! Will you look how he rides!’ and a woman cried out sharply, ‘One stumble at that speed and he’ll kill the girl!’ But her words were drowned in the shout that the men were taking up: ‘Vadir! Vadir Cedricson!’

They broke back and scattered, even as they shouted for him, and in the same instant, as it seemed, Vadir was reining the black horse on to its haunches in their midst.

Bryni sprang forward and caught Lilla as she wriggled free and dropped from the saddle-bow, and swung her away so roughly that she stumbled and would have fallen if Owain had not been there to steady her. He thought she looked ghost-white and in the moment he held her he felt her shaking, but she made no sound. Vadir laughed, softly sitting his sweating horse and looking down at the boy. ‘An ill-mannered cub,’ he said, as though to himself. ‘Maybe thralls’ manners are easily caught by those that keep thralls’ company,’ and wheeled his horse away into the throng as other hooves came pounding towards them.

Owain had a hand on Bryni’s shoulder again as the boy would have started after him. ‘Leave it!’ he muttered. ‘That was for both of us, and if I can abide an insult, so can you.’

Then Horn had come up, and horseman after horseman was sweeping into the torchlight, and shedding breathless, laughing, dishevelled girls. Once more the close-gathering shifted and fell back, and Owain saw in their midst, Vadir sitting his black horse and waiting, aloof and faintly disdainful, for his prize. Someone had brought Beornwulf’s great drinking horn with the copper and silver mountings, and put it into Lilla’s hands, and she walked forward, carrying it carefully because it was brimming with the last of the bride-ale, and Owain guessed that her hands were still shaking. The torches were spluttering out, and the firelight through the gateway turned Vadir’s face to a mocking mask as he stooped to take the horn she held up to him. ‘
Wass heil!
I drink to you!’ He threw back his head and drained it in one long draught that would have left most men gasping, and returned it, deliberately letting his hands touch hers as he did so. ‘It was a race worth the riding, after all.’

And next instant he had wheeled his horse, and without word or look for anyone else was away.

Owain, hearing the rhythm of his hoof-beats change from a canter into a gallop and fade into the distance, saw that no one else felt any shadow fall across the end of the feast. No one but Bryni and Horn and Lilla. And Bryni, baulked of a quarrel with the hated lord of Widda’s Ham, had turned himself to pick one with Horn, who, as he dismounted with a scowl blackening his usually pleasant face, looked more than ready for it. Lilla had disappeared, and he wondered if she was still shaking. For himself—he told himself for the second time that evening, not to be a fool.

T
HREE
days later Owain was clearing scrub along the inland edge of the shore-pasture when he thought he heard the beat of horses’ hooves coming towards the steading. He went on with his work, cursing the little biting flies that bred among the oak scrub, and presently he heard the hoof-beats again, fading into the distance this time. Whoever it was, they had finished whatever they came for, and gone their way; and he worked on, thinking no more about it.

The shadows of the oak trees were lengthening seaward, and soon it would be time to be going up to the steading for the evening meal. He broke off for a moment, straightened his back and stood wiping the sweat out of his eyes. Stupid, that even now he could never see the shore-meadow in this level evening light without also seeing a white stallion come trotting up the long curve of it with the salt breeze in his mane and tail.

In the sudden quiet following the rustling and slashing of his work, he heard the soft light pad of flying feet. For a moment he thought that it was Bryni, but it was not the free running of a boy, it had a faintly hampered sound and a brushing came with it that suggested skirts, and as he turned quickly towards it, Lilla came ducking under the low-hanging elder branches, like something small and desperate with the hounds behind her.

Owain tossed aside his slasher, and flung out an arm to catch her as she stumbled over a bramble root and pitched forward, and next instant she was panting against him. He held her off and looked at her. ‘Steady then! What is it?—Look, no one is following you.’

She shook her head, seeming to gather herself together, and stood quite still in his hands; quite still save that she still panted with the speed she had made. Her eyes were fixed on his face, but she did not answer.

‘What is it then, Lilla?’ he asked again.

She swallowed, and looked down. ‘Nothing. It is nothing at all.’

‘It must be something. You’re like a hunted hare.’

‘No I—oh, but you can’t help me. I don’t know why I came.’

‘Supposing you were to take a deep breath and tell me what’s amiss,’ Owain said, patiently, as though she were the same age as she had been when first he came to the Seals’ Island.

She looked up slowly, her hands twisted together. ‘It is Vadir Cedricson.’

Owain felt his face stiffen. ‘What has Vadir Cedricson been doing?’

‘He was up at home just now, and when he was gone again my mother called for me and told me—he came to ask that I should be hand-fast with him.’

‘And what did your mother say to him?’

‘She has not given him any answer as yet, but he is coming again in three days; and she will say yes, I know she will—and I am so afraid of him.’

Owain stood silent for a moment, remembering the scene at Helga’s hand-fasting, remembering Lilla laughing while Horn hung cherries in her ears, and Vadir swooping from the saddle to snatch her up for the bride-race. Why in God’s sweet name had Athelis not settled matters with Brand the Smith, before it came to this? ‘You should go to Bryni,’ he said. ‘He is your brother.’

‘Bryni! You know what Bryni is, and he hates Vadir already. If I go to him, he’ll do something mad. I daren’t.’

‘But what do you think I can do?’ Owain demanded.

‘Nothing.’ Her voice was flat and hopeless. ‘I said so, didn’t I? I ran away to you because you were the first person I thought of; but you can’t help me—nobody can help me.’