Saxon: The Book of Dreams (Saxon 1) (41 page)

‘And when poison didn’t work, did you also try to have me killed while hunting in the forest?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

From above us came the sounds of the oliphant. Hroudland was blowing the same hunting call again and again, each time less vigorously. He was tiring.

‘First I thought it was Gerin who wanted to do away with me on King Offa’s orders,’ I said, ‘More recently I believed it was Ganelon who was trying to have me murdered.
And all along it was you. You even tried to have me killed here in these mountains by that Vascon slinger.’

‘There you are wrong,’ Berenger said. ‘I had no hand in that. It must have been a genuine attack, though I did roll some rocks down on you when we were on our way here into
Hispania.’

Hroudland had come to the end of his strength. Halfway through the next hunting call, the notes died away in an ugly rasp. From the darkness where the Vascons waited came a derisive
spine-chilling howl of wolves.

Ignoring the pain in my shoulder, I twisted around so I could look up towards Hroudland. The moon had risen above the lip of the ravine and its cold light showed Hroudland facing towards the
enemy. He was swaying on his feet. With an effort he raised his sword Durendal in defiance, and then smashed it down on the rock, trying to break the blade. He failed. Twice more he tried to
destroy his sword, and then he gave up the attempt. He knelt down and laid the sword on the boulders before him. Then with the oliphant still hanging against his chest, he lay face down, the sword
beneath his body. With an awful sick sensation I knew that he would never rise again.

‘Patch, you are a hard man to kill,’ hissed Berenger.

He managed to struggle to his feet. His injured leg was too weak for him to remain standing so he put his back against the rock barrier. He had his sword in hand, and I thought he was about to
attack me. Instead he croaked, ‘I die here with Hroudland. You have no right to be here at his side. Go! I will make sure you are not followed.’

I dragged myself over the rocks, away from the Vascons. I had no idea how far I had the strength to go, and there was no reason that the Vascons would let me escape. But the urge for survival
was powerful. I gritted my teeth against the pain and stumbled forward. Twice I tripped and fell on to my knees and, weirdly, an image of Hroudland’s roan stallion came to my mind. I saw the
animal, stunned by the slingstone, getting back on its feet. I forced myself to do the same. In the darkness all around me I imagined the shapes and blurred outlines of people and grotesque
creatures. One of them was my brother’s fetch. He was seated on a rock ahead of me and I longed for him to come forward and help me. But all he did was watch me in brooding silence as if to
chide me for ignoring his warning that I should trust my enemies and beware my friends. Then my legs gave way one last time, and I sank to the ground in a dead faint.

M
Y
SHOULDER
WAS
ON
FIRE
. A hand pulled away my eye patch
and something wet pressed on my forehead. I opened both eyes and struggled to concentrate on the crooked figure stooping over me. In the thin light of dawn, Osric was using his moistened head cloth
to dab my face. I wondered if I was wandering in my wits.

‘Here, Sigwulf, drink,’ he urged. He held a leather water flask against my lips. I sipped and my choking cough produced an agonizing spasm of pain in my shoulder. I was back in the
real world. We were still on the mountain roadway, but alone.

‘Where are the others? Where’s Hroudland . . . and Berenger?’ I asked, struggling to connect Osric dressed in Saracen robes with what I remembered from the previous
evening.

‘Nothing can bring them back,’ he said. ‘Wali Husayn sent me.’ Osric squatted down on his heels so he could look me directly in the face. ‘The wali asked the
Vascons not to harm you. He still values your friendship.’

I winced as yet another stab of pain clawed my shoulder. Osric gently pulled open the rent in my brunia and checked where the Vascon spearhead had pierced my flesh.

‘In the heat of battle it was difficult for every Vascon to remember the wali’s instructions,’ he observed.

‘So the Vascons were fighting on behalf of the wali?’ I mumbled. Every bone and muscle in my body ached.

Osric shook his head.

‘They fought for themselves. After Pamplona, they wanted revenge.’

I remembered the skirmishing Saracens who had tracked the army’s withdrawal from Zaragoza. They would have been providing the Vascons with daily reports of the army’s progress.

‘Try to get to your feet,’ said Osric.

Looking past him, I saw two horses standing patiently. The Vascons must have told him that I had been seen abandoning my comrades, and Osric had brought a spare mount with him.

He put his arm around me and eased me to my feet.

‘I have a message from Wali Husayn to deliver in person to Carolus. On the way I’ll deal with that injury,’ he said. Carefully he hoisted me up on to one horse, mounted the
other and began to lead me along the track, heading over the pass.

We crossed the watershed and were descending the far side when we met the first of the Frankish outriders coming towards us along the track. They raised a halloo of triumph seeing a lone Saracen
and spurred into a gallop. But when they saw that Osric was leading a wounded man wearing a brunia, they reined in.

‘I’m bringing this man for medical help,’ Osric called out.

‘And who might you be?’ enquired the patrol leader. He was bull-necked and beefy, with an accent from somewhere on the Rhine. He was eyeing Osric with suspicion. In his fine, white
cotton gown, it was difficult to recognize Osric as a former slave. He had the manner and bearing of a Saracen of rank.

‘I come as an envoy, with a message to your king from the Wali of Zaragoza,’ said Osric smoothly.

‘And you?’ asked the Frank, examining me. His slight hesitation when he met my gaze reminded me that I had lost my eye patch.

‘Sigwulf, companion to Count Hroudland.’

The cavalryman frowned.

‘A rider came through to us in the middle of the night, sent by Count Anselm. Said the rearguard had been attacked and needed help.’

‘Any help will be too late,’ I answered wearily. ‘Count Hroudland, Count Anselm and all their men are dead.’

The Frank looked shocked. I guessed that the fate of the treasure chests was going through his mind. They held the bulk of the army’s loot.

‘Very well,’ he said after a moment’s pause. ‘You two may go forward. I’ll have one of my men keep an eye on you. The king turned back when Count Anselm’s
request for help arrived. He’s anxious for news of his nephew.’

He rode on with his patrol and we continued on our way. It was going to be another blisteringly hot day, and the trooper who accompanied us kept glancing sideways at us. He was eager to know
what had happened but I was too tired and hurting too much to satisfy his curiosity. I had decided that Carolus should be the first to hear a full account of how his favourite nephew had died.

After a while we began to overtake the laggards of the army’s main column. Groups of bedraggled men on foot mingled with camp followers plodding behind the slower supply carts. They looked
to be in low spirits already, and I wondered how they would greet the news of the loss of the treasure carts. Osric enquired if any of the vehicles carried medical stores, and eventually a friendly
storekeeper provided him with vinegar, needle and thread, and bandages. Osric sat me down on the roadside and unlaced my brunia.

‘Hold still a moment, this will hurt,’ he warned. I closed my eyes and there was a painful tug as he peeled something from my skin. I thought he was removing my undershirt but when I
opened my eyes I saw he had in his hands the blood-soaked wreckage of the Book of Dreams.

Osric gave a grim smile.

‘It caused you enough trouble so it’s only fair that it probably saved your life. It deflected the Vascon spear away from your vital organs. Then staunched the worst of the
bleeding.’ He tossed the soggy pages aside and leaned forward to examine my shoulder closely. ‘The gash is deep but not wide. I’ll clean it, and then sew the lips of the wound
together. It will hurt, but it’s best done before it putrefies. You’ll feel better afterwards.’

He was right. The stitching was agony and the thread he had been given was old and rotten. It broke several times. Eventually he plucked a hair from the tail of one of our horses and used that
after soaking it in vinegar.

‘Can’t we save even a few pages?’ I asked as I got back on my feet, stifling a gasp of pain.

He stooped down and picked up the gory mess that had been our translation of the Book of Dreams.

‘Maybe we can salvage one or two pages, but I doubt it,’ he said. ‘We’ll check later.’ He wrapped the fragments in a cloth and placed them in his saddle bag.
‘What happened to the original?’

‘I left it on one of the treasure carts. It’ll be with the loot taken by the Vascons.’

Osric shrugged.

‘Then it’s probably in Husayn’s hands.’

I felt a sense of relief.

‘I’m glad. Old Gerard obtained the Oneirokritikon from the Saracens as war loot in the first place.’

There was genuine affection in Osric’s voice as he said, ‘You and I are going to have to stick together if we want to try to remember what Artimedorus wrote.’

*

We rode on, the discomfort in my shoulder now an insistent, very painful throb beneath the bandages. The sun beat down, giving me a headache to add to my woes. The various units
of the retreating army were moving slowly along the road, strung out in clumps, and we had to work our way past them with the help of our escorting trooper. He shouted at people to move aside, and
was frequently cursed or ignored. Osric was treated to hostile glances and sometimes spat at. By mid-afternoon I was doubtful that I could continue much further. I was swaying in the saddle, dizzy
and weak.

‘I have to stop and rest,’ I told Osric. We were passing a roadside halt where a long stone trough provided a watering place for travellers and their animals. Thankfully the soldiers
had not wrecked the place. Water was too precious in such a baked and barren land.

‘We can pause here until the sun drops. As soon as the air cools down, we should push on and try to reach the king wherever he is camped,’ he said, turning aside his horse.

I dismounted with a groan and walked unsteadily to sit on a large flat stone near the water trough. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the pain from my shoulder. In the distance there was the
creak of cart wheels, the tramp of feet, the voices of groups of soldiers passing by. Much closer and more soothing was the sound of water trickling down the wooden pipe which brought the water
from a distant mountain spring. It served as a balm for my senses, and I must have drifted off into a semi-stupor for the next thing I was aware of was the clatter of many horses’ hooves.

To my annoyance I heard the riders turn in towards where I sat. The noise came very close, and then ceased. Resolutely I continued to sit with my eyes closed, making it plain that I did not wish
to be disturbed. One set of horse’s hooves came right up to me. A shadow blocked the sunlight and I sensed the animal looming above me. I heard a loud, deep snuffle. Finally, very
reluctantly, I opened my eyes.

I was looking directly into the gaping nostrils of a broad-chested war horse. It was standing over me, so close that if the creature had taken another step it would have trodden me under its
vast hoof. Beyond the massive animal, I found myself locking eyes with Carolus himself. Dusty from the road and dressed in plain travelling clothes, the king was gazing down, his expression
careworn and impatient. Behind him his retinue was drawn up in a circle.

Alarmed, I scrambled to my feet. But my legs failed me, and I sank to my knees, startling the great war horse. Trained to battle, it raised one hoof and would have struck me down if the king had
not pulled on the reins and made the stallion step back a pace. I picked myself up and made an unsteady bow.

‘The young man who interprets dreams,’ Carolus said.

‘Your Majesty,’ I blurted.

‘Shouldn’t you be with my nephew? I hear that the rearguard is in trouble.’ He spoke in that unmistakable high-pitched voice, and his words rattled around inside my skull.

I swallowed hard and managed to croak, ‘Your Majesty, the news is bad.’

His eyes narrowed as he regarded me closely. For a long moment he sat on his great horse, taking in the extent of my exhausted condition, the bandaged wound, my state of near collapse. Abruptly
he turned to his attendants.

‘Clear the area! I need to speak with this man in private. And set up an awning so I am out of this cursed sun.’

There was a jingle of harness as the royal party wheeled about. A groom ran up and held the war horse’s head while Carolus dismounted, then led the great animal away. A line of guards took
up position along the roadside to prevent anyone intruding, and I saw them hustle Osric away. Within minutes a small open-sided tent had been erected from a bundle of canvas and poles carried on a
pack pony, and stools, benches and a travelling chair appeared. Two servants held me up, one on each side, as I walked unsteadily to where the king had taken his place seated in the shade.