The Splintered Kingdom (45 page)

Wisely none of the villagers had dared offer a fight, and so the Welshmen went from house to house, searching for anything of worth that they could find, even breaking into the shabby, moss-covered building that passed for a church, ignoring the protestations of the priest, whom they carried out and cast into a dung-heap piled against a barn. There they left him, though only after kicking him in the side to see that he did not get up.

It was while they were all inside the church that we took our chance. I gave the signal to Ædda and to Galfrid, who were a little behind me, and they passed it on to the rest of the men. As one we rose and dashed across the bridge, which rattled beneath the rush of feet. One group I sent to capture the Welshmen’s ponies, which they had left untethered close by the pig-pens. Those who had weapons I took in the direction of the church, breaking into a run across the damp grass and vaulting the low dry stone wall that marked the bounds of the churchyard. Half of them, led by Galfrid, went around the other side of the building while I and six others took up position beside the doorway so that when the enemy came out we could cut them down from both sides.

After that everything happened so quickly that it was almost a blur. Within a few heartbeats the first of the Welshmen emerged, a broad grin upon his face as he dropped a silver candlestick into
a sack, and he looked up just in time to see my sword-edge smash into his face and to feel it bite through his skull. Seeing this, the others rushed out with weapons drawn, but we outnumbered them by four to one, and they stood no chance. Despite being dressed for war, they had not come here expecting much of a fight, while we were hungry for blood, hungry for the kill. We tore into them, stabbing and hacking and thrusting, filling the morning with our fury, with their cries and their spilt guts, and when all was done we stripped their limp and battered corpses and flung them into the stream, letting the waters run red so that they carried the evidence of our work here downstream as a warning.

Only when it was clear that we meant them no harm did the villagers approach once more. We returned to them the goods the Welshmen had taken and lifted the priest, a lean, ancient man with a shock of snowy hair, out of the dung-heap where he lay, dazed and somewhat shaken.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, still eyeing us nervously in spite of our kindness.

‘Friends,’ I answered simply, though he did not look reassured by that. I supposed he had a right to be nervous, for he had just witnessed four armed warriors slain in quick and brutal fashion on the doorstep of his church and their lifeblood shed over consecrated ground. He had no way of knowing that having dispatched them we wouldn’t now turn on him and his people too, and finish what the Welshmen had begun. Only when the rest of our party arrived and he saw that we too had a priest with us was he finally convinced that we did not mean to kill him.

We asked around in case any of the villagers had heard anything of Bleddyn or Eadric’s movements, or indeed of King Guillaume’s army, which could not be far away either, but met without luck, and I regretted having killed all of the foemen without taking the chance to question them first. Still, we now at least had a little more hope of being able to defend ourselves. To add to the weapons we already possessed, we now had four new round shields, and the same number of spears and knives and leather jerkins of varying sizes reinforced with steel studs, and one sturdy helmet with a chain
curtain to protect the neck that I claimed for myself. With us too we took the four ponies. All were headstrong and determined but hardy beasts that I reckoned might well have seen battle before. And so, mounted and armed, we began to look like something resembling a war-band.

Having warmed to us, the old priest bade us stay and share a repast, but I declined. The days were growing shorter, I explained, and we needed to make the most of the light while we had it if we were to catch up with the king and his host. He understood, although he still insisted we take something in return for our good work. Thus we left that place, our packs filled with rounds of cheese and bundles of salted mutton and fish, while their thankful cries rose to the heavens behind us.

But food was not foremost in my mind. No, what I hungered for was the sword-joy, the thrill of battle. This morning had only given me the briefest taste, and I was still far from sated.

We ventured north in search of the ancient trackway known to the English as Wæclinga Stræt, where Mildburg had seen the royal army. Of the people we met along the way few knew anything of the king’s progress from Lundene. Occasionally we would find someone who claimed to have glimpsed such a host within the last week, or knew someone else who had, though whether it was Welsh or English or Norman they could not say. Like Mildburg they hadn’t dared to approach too closely, but at least she had managed to tell me roughly how many they numbered and the colour of their banners, none of which they knew. I was beginning to think she was the bravest person in all of Mercia, for she had managed to bring us more useful news than anyone.

We reached Wæclinga Stræt late that afternoon and immediately saw the churned-up turf where many hundreds of hooves and feet had passed.

‘How recently were they here?’ I asked Ædda.

‘It’s hard to say,’ he replied with a shrug as he crouched down and examined some of the tracks. ‘As much as a week ago, possibly more.’ He rubbed his fingers in a trampled mound of horse shit
and then wrinkled his nose as he sniffed at them. ‘By the smell of it I’d say this is already several days old.’ He glanced about at some of the gouges that the horses’ shoes had cut in the mud. ‘Whoever came this way, they came upon large animals; you can tell from the depth of the hoof-marks here that these were no mere ponies.’ He gestured at the animals we had captured earlier that day. ‘Not like those.’

‘You think this was King Guillaume’s host?’

‘Without a doubt, lord.’

That night we camped within the ruins of what I guessed must once have been a Roman house, an arrow’s flight from the road. The roof-tiles had long since fallen in, but there were new beams and a layer of thatch over the largest chamber, suggesting someone had been here not long ago, and from the droppings on the floor I guessed it had been used as a barn. We sheltered in there, making a fire close by the entrance where the smoke could escape, warming ourselves beside it and watching flickering light play across the walls with their crumbling plaster and the faded images of people and wild beasts that long ago had been daubed thereon. Ædda, Galfrid, Odgar and myself took it in turns to keep watch through the night, and in the morning we followed the old road for another few miles before, without warning, the tracks veered away to the right.

‘In that direction lies Stæfford,’ said the monk Wigheard, who alone among all of us had any knowledge of these parts.

Stæfford. According to some of the tales that was where Bleddyn had made for following his victory at Scrobbesburh. We were growing closer. Although if these tracks were a week old as Ædda said, that suggested the battle had already been fought and won without us. Or lost, said a small voice in the back of my mind, and I tried to silence that thought, but over the hours that followed it kept returning.

To that end I kept scouting, riding from copse to copse and ridge to rain-battered ridge, crossing thickly wooded valleys in search of any sign of friend or foe, covering so many miles that by evening my stallion was growing irritable. He was called Fyrheard, which meant ‘hardened by fire’. The name, it was said, had been given
to him when he was a foal, after a stray spark from a groom’s lantern had happened to set the fresh straw in the stables alight. Fortunately the same groom had also neglected to bolt the doors and the young horse had managed to escape the blaze before it consumed the building entirely, though they said he was much changed by his ordeal, and afterwards grew ever more aggressive and wilder in spirit: qualities which made for a good warhorse. I had purchased him in case Nihtfeax should ever become injured or sick, and through the winter had begun to train him to the lance and the mêlée. He had much to learn and was still lacking in the stamina that a destrier needed, but he showed promise.

Now, however, as the sun burnt low in the western sky, Fyrheard was flagging. I coaxed him on, up to the brow of the next hill, promising myself that after this we would turn back. These were not the long evenings of summer, when the light lingered for many hours after sunset; the nights in late September had a way of setting in faster than one expected. I did not trust myself to be able to find the way back to the others in full darkness.

Each step was a struggle; Fyrheard was not in the mood for climbing, but I was determined not to let him have his way and so I urged him on, following a winding deer-track up the hill until we came to the top and I could gaze out over the river plains below—

Where the corpses of men and horses lay in their dozens and their scores and their hundreds, with the shreds of banners and pennons lying blood-stained in the dirt beside them. The dying sun cast a powerful reddish glow upon everything that put me in mind of the wastes of hell as Father Erchembald sometimes described them, and the putrid stench wafting on the breeze only helped to strengthen that impression.

I descended the slope towards the plains. Small fires, long since burnt out, and the remains of tents were scattered across the valley. There had been a camp here, though whether it had belonged to the king’s men or the enemy was not easy to discern. The corpses themselves offered little clue, so disfigured were they by wounds and the depredations of the carrion beasts. But as I grew closer to what must have been the heart of the camp I spied wooden plates
and drinking cups lying abandoned beside the fires, some with scraps of food still left upon them, as well as a couple of tattered cloaks stitched together from various furs such as were favoured by the Welsh. The stricken banners and pennons were not ones that I recognised, and that I took for a good sign.

That was when I noticed the women – about a dozen of them – moving close to the edge of a copse that ran along the riverbank. Their dark robes marked them out as nuns, and at first I wondered what they were doing, until I saw the wagon piled high with bodies. A great ditch had been dug in one corner of the field, into which they tossed the dead without much ceremony. Elsewhere a pair of oxen had been yoked together, but they were dragging not a plough but the rigid body of a horse. Its side had been carved open by a spear, and out of the wound trailed what was left of its innards; flies swarmed around it.

‘Hey,’ I called, waving to catch the nuns’ attention as I rode towards them. ‘Hey!’

Even though I rode alone they were wary of me at first, and understandably so. The scabbard belted to my waist would hardly have escaped their notice, and neither would the helmet upon my head, but I dismounted and spread my arms wide to show that I meant them no harm.

The long sleeves of their habits were rolled up to their elbows and their hands and forearms were covered with blood and dirt. Most of them were young, but there was one who was older than the rest, and who had obviously not been involving in the lifting of corpses, for her hands were unbloodied. She came to greet me, introducing herself as Abbess Sæthryth and asking my business.

I did not answer her question directly, but gave her my name in return. ‘What happened here?’

‘A terrible battle, lord.’

‘I can see that,’ I replied stiffly. I had never much cared for men and women of the cloister, nor had much patience around them. ‘Which side had the field?’

‘King Guillaume, of course. He came upon the Welshmen in the middle of the night while they were sleeping. A vicious ruin he
wrought amongst them until they fled. I’m afraid you have arrived too late.’

I ignored that last remark. ‘What about the Welsh king, Bleddyn? Did they slay him?’

‘Unfortunately he escaped. It’s said he retreated back across the dyke, although at what point he abandoned the struggle or which way he fled no one knows.’

It was because of Bleddyn that Byrhtwald was dead and I had spent countless days chained amidst my own piss at that place they called Mathrafal. I cursed loudly. The abbess flinched at my outburst. Normally I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but this time I quickly apologised, knowing that I would get better answers from her if she were well disposed towards me.

‘And Eadric?’ I asked. ‘Did he escape too?’

‘Eadric, lord?’

‘Called by some the Wild,’ I said, thinking that perhaps she hadn’t heard of him. ‘He was a thegn under the old king; he ravaged these parts some years ago, and this summer joined his cause to the brothers Bleddyn and Rhiwallon.’

‘I know who he is,’ the abbess answered, her face flushed red with indignance. ‘Don’t suppose that because we spend most of our days within the cloister that we are entirely ignorant of the world beyond.’

I sighed, trying to hold on to what small patience I had left. ‘Then tell me where he went.’

‘He was never here,’ Sæthryth said, and when she saw my confusion went on: ‘They say there was a disagreement between him and the Welsh king. The exact details are a mystery, but what is known is that afterwards he went away into the north, taking his troops with him.’

Of course. When Eadric had come to Mathrafal he had been only too happy to kill Bleddyn’s household troops in order to get to me. I ought to have guessed from that, if from nothing else, that some rift had opened between them. And I supposed it was fortunate that it had, or else King Guillaume would have faced an army perhaps half as large again, and the outcome could have been very different.

‘You say he went into the north,’ I said. ‘Where exactly did he go? Does he mean to join the ætheling?’

On that matter Sæthryth was uncertain, although it seemed the most plausible explanation. I asked, too, where King Guillaume had taken his host after the battle. By then the abbess was growing tired of my questions, but I persisted until she answered. She told me that no sooner had the Welsh been routed than the king left for Eoferwic, where he planned to do battle with Eadgar and the Danes.